CHAPTER 1 – introduction to sociology

The modern world is made up of many opportunities (e.g. globalization, communication) but also of many
anxieties (e.g. wars, pandemics): it is a “high risk, high reward” world.
Sociology is the scientific study of social groups, whole societies and the human world as such, with scopes
ranging from the more limited relationships like the family to the relations between nation-states. Much of
what appears as natural and inevitable is instead the result of an historical and social process, that needs to
be explained; using statistics can surely be helpful but data absolutely need an explanation, the why
something has happened or changed. Findings are always neutral, they tell what society is life and works,
but never tell how it should be. Moreover, in case sociologist look for practical ways to improve the life
conditions of people we speak of applied sociology; this can be done on a small scale or through
recommendations directly to the government.

Think sociologically means to develop the imagination in a certain way, because sociologists have to break
free from the personal sphere and see things in a broader social context; on this purpose, the American
sociologist C. Wright Mills in 1970 talked about the sociological imagination: it is demanded to “think
ourselves away” and to look things from a new point of view. The example provided is the cup of coffee:
- Pleasant drink
- Social activity (more important than the drink per se)
- Personal routine
- Caffeine, a drug which is socially accepted
- Economic relationships + social relationships

Some also define sociology as the science of society; society is a group of people living in a bounded territory
who share common cultural features such as language, values and basic norms of behavior (we can speak of
the Italian society, but society also includes the institutions such as the educational system and the relatively
stable relationships between them). The enduring patterns formed by. Relationships among people, groups
and institutions form the basic social structure of a society. We as individuals are surely influenced by the
social context, but never entirely determined by it; sociology investigates the connection between what
society makes of us and that we make of society and ourselves (<->). The social context is never a mass of
random events but are shaped in a specific pattern with regularities; once you have a social structure this
does not remain identical forever, because human structures are always in a process of structuration, so
they are reconstructed at every moment by the very same humans (e.g. the. Communism with its end in
1989-1991).

Sociology has never been a discipline with a single body of ideas, but there is diversity about how to study
human behavior and how to interpret it (long-held views of the human being are hard to challenge, so
sociology may also be disturbing). To provide an explanation to things, we have to address questions, collect
evidence and start theorizing. Theorizing means to construct abstract interpretations of events using a series
of logically related statements that explain a wide variety of empirical or factual situations; of course a theory
should not be based on mere speculation because later the explanatory theory and the factual research
should be closely related, in order to use the underlying theoretical assumptions as a way of interpretation.

The basic same attempt to understand human behavior were passes down from generation to generation
for thousands of years up modernity in some cases (e.g. medicine from a magical to a scientific approach); a
change arrived in the study of social life with the French Revolution and the 18th Industrial Revolution,
events that shattered the old order of events pushing towards a more systematic and scientific way of
looking at the social and natural world (against religious beliefs). An important thing to mention is that
sociology starts focusing on modernity and refers primarily to Europe and North America, even if the
postcolonialism movement challenges these origins of sociology, saying that the devastating impact of
colonialism were not taken into account at a sufficient degree (colonialism has a legacy of exploitation that
lasted well more than the official years). Among the founders of sociology we have:
1
à AUGUST COMTE (1798-1857)
He coined the world sociology to distinguish from other rival scholars while ha started reflecting on the
turbulent age he was living in; in particular, he aimed at discovering the laws of the social world, just as
natural science has discovered the laws of the natural world, to help us shape our destiny. A scientific
approach had to be applied to all the subjects in general, so he wanted sociology to became a positive
science, concerned only with observable entities that are known directly to experience (observation –
relationships explained – prediction of future events). He also stated that the attempts to understand the
world passed through three stages: theological (society as an expression of God’s will), metaphysical (society
seen in natural rather than supernatural terms), positive. Worried about the dangers to social cohesion
produced by industrialization, he proposed a “religion of humanity” to hold it together despite inequalities.

àDURKHEIM (1858-1917) + FUNCTIONALISM

Again, social life should have been studied with the same objectivity as scientists with the natural world. He
introduced the notion of social fact as those institutions and rules of action which constrain or channel
human behavior, as external pressures that most of the time are simply taken for granted as normal parts of
life (e.g. money); they exist independently from the individual, shaping its choices and actions. He was also
interested in social and moral solidarity, that is what binds a society together; it is maintained when
individuals are integrated into social groups regulated by values and customs. Industrial age led to a new
kind of solidarity: older culture had a mechanical solidarity because there was a low division of labor, so
people had similar occupations; on the other hand, modernity brought an organic solidarity, in which people
that have different occupations became one dependent on the other like the organs of a living creature.
Durkheim was warried about the rapid social changes of his time, with old values that lost their grip without
new ones ready: that’s the anomie condition.

According to functionalism, society is a complex system (organic) whose parts work together to produce
stability and whose relationships are studied by sociology; the moral consensus is fundamental in
maintaining order, and it exists when people share the same values (e.g. religion). Up to the 60s this was the
main tradition in sociology, held firmly by Merton, who distinguished between manifest functions (known
to and intended by participants of a specific social activity) and latent functions (consequences of that
activity that participants are unaware of); he also mentioned dysfunctions as the features of social life that
challenge stability and order (e.g. disagreement between religious groups). Functionalism minimizes the
importance of inequalities and is ill-equipped to face new movements (peace/environment)

à MARX (1818-1883) + CONFLICT THEORY

He also sought to explain changes caused by the Industrial revolution from his permanent exile in GB, the
heartland of this phenomenon, reconnecting social issues with economic problems. His focus was the
development of capitalism: based on the capital, so any asset that can be used or invested to make future
assets, and the wage-labor, the pool of workers that do not own the means of production, the system implies
a class system and subsequent struggle, because they are dependent on each other but in an unbalanced
way. This is the “motor of history” that would soon lead to the overthrow of the capitalistic system in favor
of a society without large-scale divisions and the establishment of communism.

Conflict theory emphasizes the importance of social structure, rejecting the notion of consensus;
inequalities, class struggle, different interests are the focus here, even if not all conflict theories are
descendant of Marxism (e.g. feminism)

à WEBER (1864-1920) + SYMBOLIC INTERACTIONISM OR SOCIAL ACTION

He recognized the class conflict but he did not made it central in his studies like Marx, because he believed
economic factors were important but ideas and values could also bring about social change; sociologists
should study social actions, the subjectively meaningful actions of people that are oriented towards others,
2
to understand them better. The notion of ideal type is central: it is a model created to alert us to some social
phenomenon and help us to make sense of it (ideal type of a terroristic group instead of ISIS/IRA/ETA); you
use an ideal type instead of using a particular case as a template for the others. He ultimately pointed out
the rationalization that was occurring at the time, so the shift from the traditional beliefs to a scientific
approach, efficiency and technical knowledge; he feared this process as the possible imprisonment of man’s
creativity with a risk of over-regulating every aspect of a person’s life.

Symbolic interactionism arises from the attention given to the language and meaning: language allows us to
become aware of our own individuality and able to see ourselves as others see us; the symbol is a key
concept as something that stands for something else (e.g. words are symbols that stand for the different
objects), but also non-verbal gestures are important symbols. These sociologists often focus on face-to-face
interactions of everyday life, partially ignoring larger issues of power, and, although recognizing the presence
of social structures, they state that they are created by the actions of individuals. The most important case-
study is the one by Hochschild about the alienation of the service workers that are requested not only
physical activity but also “emotional labor”, to present their emotions

Theories in sociology are more narrowly focused than traditions and are attempts to explain particular social
conditions events or social changes; sociology is not dominated by a single theoretical tradition, but this is
not a weakness but a sign of vitality, also because the human behavior is many-sided and it is impossible to
be fully explained by a single theoretical perspective.
An important distinction between the theoretical perspectives is the level of analysis at which each is
directed:
- Microsociology: everyday behaviors in face-to-face interactions, they are clearly the base of
everything no matter what the scale is.
- Macrosociology: large scale social structures and long-term processes of change

People do not live their lives completely isolated but at the same time are not fully determined by the social
structures: there is a meso level (family, neighborhoods, communities) in which it is possible to see the
effects of both the macro and the micro level.

The uses of sociology:

1. Awareness of cultural differences and problems, also to address better practical policies
2. Assessing the results of a policy and judging possible unintended consequences
3. Self-enlightement and self-understanding
4. Practical professional matters (urbanists, personnel managers, …)

Different kinds of sociology:

• Professional sociology: conventional, university based, with large research programmes
• Policy sociology: studies which pursue goals defined by clients
• Critical sociology: points out the questionable assumptions of research projects and professional
sociology (e.g. feminism)
• Public sociology: rooted on the dialogue, it speaks with social groups (e.g. trade unions) and
organizations in the civil society about the future direction of society as a whole

Mostly these four types have several overlapping. It is a. quite close discipline to non-sociologists (that’s a
pity).

3
CHAPTER 2 – asking and answering sociological questions
Humphreys had conducted a study about the Chinese “tearooms”, public toilets where men went to have
sex with other men at a time when in the nation homosexuality was a crime (up to 1997) and a mental health
issue (up to 2001); there was a common stigma over MSM that pushed sociology to study this phenomenon,
generally hidden from view but existent, and to provide recommendations for positive social and policy
change. The question that Humphreys wanted to answer is basically arisen from the participation within the
society, the personal experience but also the political commitment sometimes; nevertheless, the researcher
also has to maintain a certain detachment from the subject matter, especially at the moment of providing
explanations and conclusions (philosophers even argued if this detachment is even possible).

All researches that are concerned with human beings carry with them some moral and ethical dilemmas:
the real subject matter of the study, how data will be stored and for how long, matters of confidentiality and
so on. Humphreys was unethical according to nowadays’ standards because he conducted the study in the
tearooms covertly (did not reveal he was a sociologist), without the informed consent of the participants,
without involving directly with questions the participants in the study, took down the license plate of
participants and then later went to their houses to ask further demands on separated subject matters. These
methods are nowadays not legitimate.

The tearooms experiment allowed the researched to find out the toilets are socially constructed, in the sense
that for most people had obvious purposes, but for a minority were a place where have sex; social
constructionism is a perspective which begins from the premise that social reality is the product of
interactions between individuals and groups, not something taken as natural. Moreover, the discoveries are
nothing but fixed and eternal, because society is always changing. Hence, the questions we as sociologists
have to ask are factual (empirical) questions, that sometimes can be difficult to answer as well; the single
study and attempt to gather factual information can’t provide proper explanation if a phenomenon is
unusual: we have to ask comparative questions too, relating findings from one society to another social
context or using contrasting examples. Another useful thing to do is comparing present situations with the
past, to gain a sort of social development, asking the so-called developmental questions. Of course, since
fats gathered do not speak for themselves, theoretical questions are asked as well, regarding the reason,
the why, things happen in that way; theoretical questions are never asked per se, but always in relation to
empirical facts.

Is sociology a science? – What is a science?

Comte defined sociology as a science with the same methods of natural sciences, but is it possible to study
social life in a scientific way? According to Comte science begins with observation and collection of data,
looking for patterns, developing general theories which provide explanations of the evidence; it is a process
called induction, but it is quite idealized and not based on the actual practice of scientists.

This picture is challenged in the 20s by the Vienna Circle which focused on logic and deductive reasoning,
creating the so-called logical positivism: scientists begin to formulate hypothesis and then try to look for
evidence (hypothetico-deductive method); everything has to be tested against evidence, even if there are
matters that are meaningless scientifically speaking. The theory of truth behind logical positivism is that
statements are accepted as true only if they correspond to what exists in the real world (empirical
verification).

In the 30s Popper challenged this vision and the principle of verification, which was not a powerful method:
almost any theory, even if unrealistic, can collect some data; a more powerful principle is disconfirmation:
scientists seek for cases that disconfirm their hypotheses because a single case can destroy a whole theory.
Scientific knowledge can never be taken as eternal and universally true, because it is true up to the moment
it is falsified (open).

4
In the 60s/70s Kuhn was interested in what could have been learned from the development of science and
theories; scientists tend to work within the overall assumptions of a particular theoretical framework, called
paradigm, to which they become committed and try to expand. Possible cases against the paradigm may
occur, but scientists tend to defend the paradigm because of sociological reasons: they built a career upon
it, they belong to a community of scholars with shared interests in defending the paradigm and their
reputations. Some people, though, typically young and less committed to paradigms, worked on the
anomalies and created new paradigms (e.g. Einstein), but this was not what Popper had in his mind: it is
more like a revolutionary science because what came before, the older paradigm, is not properly falsified
(e.g. Newton mechanisms still works when we are not in relativistic conditions).
The philosophy of science studied by Feyerabend suggests that episodes like the one by Einstein often come
out as a deviation from the established scientific practice, so he proposes anarchy, the impossibility to stick
to a specific set of rules in the scientific research. Instead, according to Pawson, methodological rules are
always in a process of development, but they cannot be defined as irrelevant; although there is not a single
method, some key elements of science remain and consequently social disciplines must be considered
scientific because both quantitative and qualitative research involves some fixed elements. Even If sociology
can be defined as scientific, it cannot properly adopt the exact same methods of natural sciences, because
it is dealing with humans, self-aware beings; on one side it is a disadvantage because it is not possible to
enter into the mind of an individual so easily, but it is an advantage because humans can speak to the
researches, are more reliable (different researchers come to the same results) and valid (the research
actually measures what is supposed to. Mention here the problems regarding sabotage and the changes of
behavior.

The research process

à STEP 1: DEFINING THE PROBLEM
The selection of the topic for the research may start from an area of factual ignorance (the aim is improving
our knowledge) or from problems that are also puzzles, so gaps in our understanding (why events happen in
the way they do); from the resolution of a puzzle other may require a study

à STEP 2: REVIEW THE EXISTING EVIDENCE (LITERATURE)

In some cases previous researches have already successfully answered to our question, so it is useful to
review the existing literature to avoid duplication and repetition, but also because reviewing others’ ideas
help to clarify which method may be used and the issues previously raised.

à STEP 3: MAKE THE PROBLEM PRECISE

The problem has to be formulated clearly (literature already exists it could lead to the formulation of the
research question immediately through an “educated guess”), in such a way that the empirical material
gathered will provide evidence in support/contrast; if we are dealing with numerical data, we will be favored
in using statistics as a verification, while in cases of qualitative research, they will be explanatory in character
and will allow research questions to emerge.

à STEP 4: SELECT A RESEARCH DESIGN

A research method has to be chosen because it determines how the evidence will be gathered; this depends
on the overall objective of the study and the aspects of behavior analyzed (survey, interview, observational
study, …)

à STEP 5: CONDUCTING THE RESEARCH

Conducting the research practically can result in some difficulties:
- Impossibility to contact selected people à bias due to the partial sample and false overall results
- Interviewer who pulls the discussion over specific matters or the interviewee that avoids the answer
- When potential participant do not want to take part in the research à non-response bias
- Cultural viewpoint of the researcher à observer bias
5
à STEP 6: INTERPRETING THE RESULTS & REPORT THE RESEARCH FINDINGS
After the process of gathering data, there is the need of working out the implications of those collected, but
the process is everything but full conclusive very often (questions unanswered are also listed).

Causes and effects

Causes and effects are primary matters especially in quantitative research. We speak about a casual
relationship (causation) between two events or situations as an association in which one event or situation
produces another; it happens because all events have causes and life is not made of randomly occurring
events. Causation cannot be inferred directly from correlation, that implies the existence of a regular
relationship between two sets of occurrences or variables (variable = any dimension along which individuals
or groups vary, such as age, gender, ethnicity, …); two variables can be closely linked, or correlated, without
happening that one is the cause of the other (e.g. suicide rates and time of the year). Working out the casual
connections involved in identified correlations is often difficult, but for sure in sociology they should not be
understood in a too mechanical way (there are still the subjective attitudes of people for acting in a certain
way); nevertheless, to find out the presence of a causation that explains a correlation it is useful to
distinguish dependent and independent variables, so that the direction of the casual relationship is
determined. To do so, we can use controls, that consists in holding some variables constant in order to look
at the effects of the others (separating casual and non-casual relations). A classic example is the relationship
smoking-lung cancer: there is for sure a correlation but there are still some doubts about the possible casual
relationship; identifying casual relations is normally guided by previous research into the subject.

Research methods
First of all it is good to mention the distinction made in sociology between quantitative, qualitative research
methods and traditions; quantitative (functionalism + positivism) tries to measures social phenomena using
mathematical and statistical approaches, while qualitative attempt to gather detailed and rich data, with a
deeper understanding of individual actions related to the social context. Qualitative and quantitative are not
two opposing camps, since often sociological researched adopt mixed methods in order to gain a more
comprehensive view. There are different research methods:
Þ ETHNOGRAPHY: It is a type of fieldwork that involves a first-hand study of people made both by
participant observation and by interviews: considering small-scale phenomena, the investigator
lives, hangs out and works with the group/community/organization studied and sometimes plays a
direct part in it (that’s the case of Chinese Tearooms). Of course, apart from the limited scale of the
study, the objectivity of it has been questioned since the researcher has its own assumptions (+
gender/ethnicity/age pov), the study depends on its capacity of gain the confidence of the studied
ones, the researcher could get too involved. Sociologists also may take part in focus groups,
facilitated group discussions in which the ethnographer selected the individuals to share views and
in which he has the role of moderator (not particularly detached) and interviewer, with all of a series
of problems arising from that
Þ SURVEYS: if ethnography presents problems of small-scale and subsequent generalization, an
alternative is surely large-scale survey research: questionnaires are sent to a selected group of
people called sample, with data that can be applied in a quantitative analysis and produce results
that are less detailed but more generalized. Sampling allows to avoid questioning the entire
population (several millions typically) and concentrate on small population of some thousands
people that represent the overall one and, if carefully chosen, allow to extend the results, to
generalize successfully. The sample has to be representative, so the group of individuals studied
must be typical of the population as a whole; to obtain that sample, it is can be used:
o Random sampling: a sample is chosen so that every member of the population has the same
probability of being included (the old way of doing so is the phonebook, nowadays we use
computers)

6
 o Convenience sampling: typically used in hard-to-reach social groups reluctant to come
forward, this kind of sampling is less rigorous and systematic because it implies getting the
sample from wherever you can
o Snowball sampling: existent participants are used to gather other participants through their
own network of contacts

Nowadays surveys are also deeply criticized because the accuracy of the results is only an
appearance, while non-responding people are even the half of the sample size.
Surveys are normally anticipated by pilot studies in which just a few people complete the
questionnaire in order to pick up such ambiguities and problems that may not be anticipated by the
designers. The latter may choose different kinds of questionnaire, such as the standardized one with
fixed-choice answers, producing results that are easy to count (and perform statistics on) but they
are also restricted in scope and sometimes misleading because the choice is limited and unprecise;
open-ended questionnaires are more detailed but also less standardized and harder to interpret.
Þ EXPERIMENTS: they are attempt to test a hypothesis under highly controlled conditions established
by the investigator (they are typically used in natural sciences and in psychology), but in the case of
sociology they prevent the analysis of the macro-micro level relationships and remove individuals
from the natural environment they should be studied in
Þ BIOGRAPHICAL RESEARCH: It includes biographies, autobiographies, oral histories, narratives which
are used to explore how individuals experience social life, periods of social change and how they
interpret their relations with others in a changing world. Biographical researches give us a feel for
how life is experienced (= no large scale), even if it is never wise to rely exclusively on people’s
memories but also other sources; some sociologists, nevertheless, argue that they are too subjective
Þ COMPARATIVE AND HISTORICAL RESEARCH: making comparisons (typically between countries) allow
us to clarify what is going on in a particular area of social life, but it is fundamental as well a historical
time perspective to make sense of material gathered, and so it happens that sociologists investigate
past events directly; researches can be done adopting oral history (interviewing survivors like in the
Holocaust) or using documentary resources (newspapers, diaries, policy documents, tax records, …),
whether they are primary or secondary (typically account of historical events written by people after
the event. The authenticity of the document can also be questioned.
Þ VISUAL SOCIOLOGY: it happens that sociologists produce their own visual material but traditionally
text remains more important; nevertheless, in recent years visual sociology has allowed to access to
areas previously unexplored (like the consume of alcohol among young female) in which photos,
films, videos became objects of study. Family photos as well may be considered a key element in the
passing of generations, or films in the customs and dresses and manners; the kind of sources can,
again, be questioned (who produced them, for what reason, what is included/omitted)
Þ DIGITAL SOCIOLOGY: it started from the emergence of internet (sociologists already were using
technology for data since the 60s though) that allowed the access to an unlimited quantity of data
from all over the world, even if the risk of data accuracy still exists and the questions that should be
asked are always the same. Thanks to videocalls, email, apps and so on, the researchers can gather
data in similar ways. Moreover, thanks to the internet user data are constantly gathered (risks of data
storage and privacy à dataveillance) in a subtle way, that gives them more strength actually because
the user is not aware (even if it is not a natural collection of data because behind the system there
are always humans).
Þ TRIANGULATION AND MIXING METHODS: since all methods have limitations, it is nowadays a
common trend among researchers to combine different methods in the same piece of research,
through the process of triangulation (more reliability); there are 4 kinds of triangulation:
o Data triangulation: different sampling strategies to collect data at different times
o Investigator triangulation: a team of researchers carries out the investigation
o Theoretical triangulation: using several theoretical approaches when interpreting the data
o Methodological triangulation: more than one methodology is adopted in the study
7
Even if dealing with daily relations, sociology is not a re-statement of some previous knowledge, but a
sharpening of understanding of things that appear obvious and a transformation of our commonsense
perspective (what seems to us obvious), challenging our personal beliefs and prejudices. Our behavior is
affected by sociological knowledge, and so as we change behavior society changes to; it is a two-way
phenomenon called reflexive relation.

CHAPTER 3 – theories and perspectives

Sociologists need to devise abstract interpretations – theories - to explain the evidence they collect; if they
are to formulate appropriate questions that focused their efforts, they also need to adopt of the radical
approach at the outset of their research. Theorizing takes place in concrete contexts, around by the major
social and political issues, as the founding father of the subject did; some argue that the central issues of
sociology are significantly different today, and the subject had to re-evaluate the classical theories
sometimes just dressing them up with a new language.

A sociological theory seeks to explain empirical findings and tries to avoid the sociologists personal beliefs
and political commitment to interfere with their work; social theories, instead, do not necessarily originate
within sociology, and they often contain normative critiques of social and political arrangements arguing
that a politically neutral sociology is not possible.
For sure, it would be much easier if there was just one central theory around which all sociologists could
work (and for the 50s/60s functionalism seemed to be), but in reality sociology is marked by different
theoretical approaches and perspectives that deepen our overall understanding of social life; these theories
can be more focused on specific aspects of social lives or they can be grand theories that aim to explain social
structures and long-term developments in human societies.
Another important distinction is between formal theories, produced by the classical theorists That created
something like a paradigm, and the less formal or even informal theories of the 70s or 80s, rooted in
representations of social reality through new concepts such as globalization, postmodernism, liquid
modernity and so on.

Two revolutionary transformations in Europe made a new sociological perspective emerge:

1) the industrial revolution of the late 18th and 19th century transformed the material conditions of life
and work, bringing with it new social problems; Reformers start ways to mitigate and solve these
problems, which led them to carry out research and gather evidence on the extent and nature of
those social changes
2) the French Revolution of 1789 marked the end point of the old European regimes and the
establishment of new ideals that were partially the outcome of the mid 18th century enlightenment:
philosophical and scientific notions of reason, rationality, challenge of religion and tradition.

These revolutionary transformations are seen key moments of the European modernization that led to
modernity, an era marked by a combination of rationalization, democratization, individualism, reliance on
scientific thinking, technological development; sociology is a modern discipline in this sense because it tries
to understand how such radical change had occurred and what are its consequences.

Comte’s contribution to sociology

He saw sociology as the science of society, and his positivistic approach was based on the principle of direct
observation followed by theoretical statements aimed at establishing casual, law-like generalizations;
sociology had to gain knowledge of the social world in order to make predictions about it, intervene and
shape it. Such knowledge, similar to the one of the natural sciences, was criticize because related to human
behaviors, definitely unreliable, capable of being influenced by the individuals’ self-consciousness. He saw
the forms of human knowledge through history as moving from the theological phase, to the metaphysical

8
one and, finally, to the positive stage: Social life with the last area to move into the positive state, so that
sociology was destinated to be the final scientific discipline.

Spencer’s contribution to sociology

Spencer argued that as the word of nature is subject to biological evolution, societies are subject to social
evolution that takes the form of structural differentiation through which simple societies develop into more
complex forms with an increasingly diverse array of social institutions and functional adaptions. An example
are the industrial societies of the 19th century created from the article one that preceded them, as an
application of the principle of the survival of the fittest in the social and biological evolution. These theories
of evolution went into decline into the 20th century.

Marx’s contribution to sociology

his theoretical approach starts from the analysis of capitalism, which is part of the broader theory of class
conflict as the driving force of history; his perspective is sometimes referred to as historical materialism or
materialist conception of history: Marx is opposed to idealism, a philosophical doctrine which says that the
historical development of societies is driven by abstract ideas or ideals, arguing that the dominant ideas and
ideals of an age are in fact reflections of the dominant way of life, specifically our society's mode of
production. The latter is the one that support the ruling groups; for example, in an absolute monarchy the
dominant ideas suggested that kings and Queens had a divine right to rule.

Marx unerlines a structured development of human societies starting from a small groups with no developed
system of property that shared communally the resources and had no class division (primitive communism);
as the group produced more, a new mode of production emerged, this time with some private property
(including slavery in Greece and Rome; from here, feudalism developed with its fundamental class division;
the future mode of production also reached its productive limitations and gave way to the capitalist society.
In this letter case, we have two groups simplified as the capitalists and the workers, who would be pushed
up to the breaking point of the revolution; capitalistic relations act as a brake to socio-economic progress up
to the establishment of the communist society.

For sure, this theory allowed huge benefits to the discipline as a whole, but also showed the problem of
grand theories, so the fact that it's difficult to subject them to empirical testing

Durkheim’s establishment of sociology

According to Durkheim, The study of specifically social phenomena was needed whenever research into
people's behavior when beyond individual interactions; social institutions and social forms of leave the
particular individuals, therefore they must have a reality of their own. What we call “the social” or social life
is a level of reality in its own right, that cannot be reduced to individual actions; as a matter of fact, Durkheim
focuses on group phenomena and social facts: people experience the social facts as things external to them,
something that has a thing-like existence which individuals must accept and take into account in their
actions.
This psychology of individuals was not the proper subject for sociology, which concerns itself with collective
phenomena such as solidarity; his study on organic solidarity made him reject the idea that industrialism
inevitably destroyed social solidarity, contrarily, it strengthens the mutual interdependence.
His approach to sociologist is known as functionalism, particularly good at explaining consensus, so why
societies hold together, even if it's less effective in explaining conflict and radical social changes because it
is prioritizing society's constraints on people and does not allow enough room for the creative actions of
individuals; in his mind society has purposes and needs itself.

Structural functionalism – Parsons and Merton’s establishment of sociology

Persons started from this so-called problem of the social order, so how society can hold together when all
the individuals within it are self-interested and pursue their own wants and needs, often at the expense of
9
the others; he starts refusing the Hobbesian idea. He recognized that conformity to social rule was not
reduced to simple fear of punishment, but also a conformity in positive ways: social rules are not just an
external force acting on individuals but have become internalized during the process of socialization.
Regarding the social system he developed the AGIL paradigm, defining the four basic functions that our
society must perform:
1) it must be capable of adapting to its environment, gathering enough resources à economic
subsystem performing adaptive function
2) it must be set out and put in place goals to be attained and mechanism for their achievement à
political subsystem sets goals
3) the system must be integrated and the various subsystems must be effectively coordinated à the
community subsystem does the integrative work
4) the social system must have ways of preserving and transmitting its values and culture to new
generations à the educational subsystem transmits culture and values (latency function)

Again, structural functionalism gave priority to the overall system needs; Merton solve the problem with the
meso level of social interaction; he also distinguished the manifest and latent functions in this society.

Weber’s establishment of sociology

He asked the question about the reason for the birth of capitalism in the West, considering the fact that for
many centuries from the fall of ancient Rome other civilizations were long way had the West in technological
and economic development; capitalistic economies have an attitude towards the accumulation of wealth
that is found nowhere else in history, called “spirit of capitalism”. Nevertheless, these industrialists in the
West did not spend their accumulated treasures on a materialistic lifestyle, rather invested their wealth to
promote further expansion of their enterprises (circle of investment). The controversial point comes when
Weber attributed the spirit of capitalism to religion: the early capitalists were mostly Puritans and many also
Calvinists, so believers that humans are gods instruments on earth, work is a vocation and people are
predestinated for heaven in the afterlife. The growing anxiety among followers led to a constant search for
signs of elections, among which economic prosperity was one of them; they also considered luxury to be evil
and had an unadorned lifestyle.
Some criticize this theory saying that also in the 12th century Italian merchants showed similar trades, but
the theory meets important criteria for theoretical thinking in sociology: it suggests an interpretation that
breaks with common sense; it makes sense of something that is otherwise puzzling; it clarifies the
circumstances it was supposed to explain; it creates stimuli four further researches.

Symbolic interactionism
Simmel is the very first modern sociologist, because he saw the discipline as concerned predominantly with
social interactions. Mead was deeply influenced by him when he started investigating social interactions
with a focus on language and symbols, arguing the very existence of social structure as only individuals and
their interactions can really be said as existing; the individual person is a social self, a product of interactions.
The general attention is given to micro-level interactions and in the ways meaning is constructed and
transmitted: humans use symbols in communication as something to refer to something else, even if a
symbol can convey more than one meaning even in the same setting (it is what really makes the difference
with animals who only react to stimuli). Goffman is another interactionist who focuses on the processes of
stigmatization and the ways in which people present their selves in social encounters.

phenomenology
it is an actor centered perspective which deals with the ways in which social life is actually experienced; It is
a systematic study of phenomena, of things as they appear in our experience. The attention is to the
everyday experience and how this comes to be taken for granted as part of the lifeworld, the one routinely
experienced and lived as natural. Schultz was in particular interested in typifications, the ways in which
experienced phenomena are classified according to previous experience; it is commonplace, it helps to order
10
our world and make it more predictable and therefore safe. The problem comes when it becomes
stereotypification, the illegitimate generalization about people based on simply on their membership of a
certain social group. Once assumptions become internalized, they are still sedimented below the surface of
conscious existence and form the basis of the natural attitude; in this way people experience important
aspects of the social world and society becomes taken as a thing-like entity, separated from the individual

ethnomethodology
It is the systematic study of the methods used by natives (members of a particular society) to construct their
social words, typically at the micro-level; people are not passive recipients of society socializing agents, but
rather creative actors. They seek to uncover just how social facts are created by society members and come
to have that thing-like quality (much of its analysis is of conversation).

CHALLENGING MAINSTREAM SOCIOLOGY

- Feminism
Accepted founders of sociology were old men who paid scant regard either to the differential
experience of men and women or to gender relations; the very few times that women are mentioned
are referred to in a stereotypical conclusion. Durkheim refer to women as products of nature while
men products of a society; Marx talks about women it's different in power and status from men as a
reflect of other divisions, especially class divisions, that when appeared transformed women in
private properties. Nowadays ethnicity and cultural background are other factors shaping social
divisions between men and women; sociologists also became much more interested in
intersectionality - the ways in which divisions of class, gender and ethnicity intersect to produce
complex forms of social inequality.
Feminist theories challenged male dominated or malestream sociology since the 60s and the 70s. It
became evident a male bias in sociological theorizing that drew general conclusions from experience
of men and research methods that were not designed to capture women experience; their perceived
female oriented private sphere of households and families were completely ignored, to the point
that some feminist sociologists called for a reconstruction of the entire discipline. Feminist theory
started covering an increasing range of positions and disagreements across feminism started to
spread so that it is impossible to speak of a single unified feminist theory of society. They also claimed
about the gendered nature of knowledge, coming from the different experiences and views of the
world of men and women, but man always maintained their authority; others, claim that it's a
mistake to suppose that men or women are even distinct groups and the gender itself it's not a fixed
category but something fluid more related to what people do rather than what they are (gender
could be a process of social construction with no fixed biological foundation)

- Post structuralism and post modernity

Post structuralism analyzes the emergence of modern institutions, such as prisons, hospitals and
schools, that have played an increasing role in monitoring and controlling the population; there could
be a darker side to enlightenment ideas of individual liberty, concerned with discipline and
surveillance. Power is a fundamental concept in sociology, and the role of discourse (ways of talking
or thinking about particular subjects that are united by common assumptions) is central to this
thinking; Discourses can be used as powerful tools to restrict alternative ways of thinking or speaking
and knowledge becomes a force of control.
Since the mid 80s, advocates of postmodernism claim that the classic social thinkers took their
inspiration from the idea that history has a shape, it goes somewhere and it's progressive; this idea
now collapsed since there are no longer any overall conceptions of history or society that make any
sense (“metanarratives”). Postmodern word is not destinated, has lost its faith, and sociology tries
to explain this; we need a post modern sociology for a postmodern world, since the project of the
European Enlightenment of rationally shaping society no longer makes sense.

11
 From the turn of the century we talk about liquid modernity, in which there is a constant flux and
uncertainty in spite of all attempts to impose a modern order and stability onto it.

- Decolonizing sociology
sociology is predominantly Eurocentric because of historical reasons: theorists came from North
America and Europe while the contribution of scholars from Asia, Africa and elsewhere in the world
that were neglected. Postcolonial theories concern about the exhilaration of the ways in which the
legacy of the European colonialism remains active in both societies and economic disciplines long
after the former colonies have achieved independence; the discipline has to take into account
colonial and postcolonial relationships.
In a parallel way, sociological theory focused on explaining the emergence of modernity and
analyzing its radical difference from previous societies, but in doing so early sociologists characterized
non-European societies as premodern or in some way traditional. In many works of Western
academics, they studied the Orient or the East as something in sharp contrast with the Occident, it
was something like normal versus exotic; The contrast was used to explain the failure of the Orient
to modernize.

Sometimes postcolonial theorists argue that even contemporary theories remain stuck in older
Eurocentric ways of thinking; Others also demand every thinking of the foundations of sociology, but
there's it's almost impossible because systems are inevitably ethnocentric in focus, style and available
expertise.

ENDURING THEORETICAL DILEMMAS

They are matters of recurring controversy and dispute about how we can or should do sociology. There are
two very important:
1) THE PROBLEM OF STRUCTURE AND AGENCY
It regards the relative weight we should afford to social structure and human agency, so basically
how far individuals are creators and the extent to which they are the result of social forces outside
personal control. The notion that society is something solid, something material, has been criticized
because society is the composite of many individual actors interacting and social phenomena are not
like things but depend on the symbolic meaning that are invested by humans (creators).
Nevertheless, structures do precede and constrain the individual (e.g. monetary system) but would
not exist if not originally created by individuals; in other words, social fact can influence but not
determine ourselves (e.g. we could live without money)

There had been some attempt to merge and bring together the dichotomy agency-structure:
a) Elias and the figurational sociology: the dualism is a reminiscence of philosophy, to which
sociology used to defer in the past, but dualisms are in general useless and inaccurate, since they
imply the existence of two separate thing-like entities between individual and society.
Sociologist study people, we are always in networks or relations of interdependence (called
figurations – figurational studies), but if we start from social figuration it comes that the
individual person is not an anonymous, closed being coming into contact with others only during
interactions, but is an open being with individual identities and selves are socially produced in
networks of social relations.
On the other hand, society is a long term social process of ever changing figurations (taking as an
example the development of civilized code of manners first from the Royal Courts then to
common people because of the process of status competition), So we can never understand why
would we accept this natural exists unless we appreciate the development over the time.
The figuration perspective does not try to bridge this structure agency dilemma, but it effectively
resolves the problem altogether since there is no need for sociologists to focus exclusively on the
micro level or the macro level; it's a matter of understanding the shifting figurations formed by
12
 interdependent people from the concern given to every aspect of human life (that is – from the
micro to the macro level)

b) Giddens’ structuration theory: he does not reject philosophy, arguing that sociology must be
alive to philosophical problems, whose debates can contribute to understanding social life.
Giddens’ approach begins from the recognition that people make and remake social structure
during the course of their everyday activities (e.g. monetary system); the tool for analyzing such
processes is structuration: according to this theory, structure and action are necessarily related
to each other à groups have structure only as people behave in regular and fairly predictable
ways, while action is only possible because each individual possesses an enormous amount of
socially constructed knowledge (e.g. language). Structuration always presumes this duality of
structure: social life demands that we follow complex sets of conventions, and as we apply that
knowledge at our own actions we give content to those rules, so the structure presumes
regularities of human behavior. So theological explanations needed to establish whether
structure or agency is the cause of social phenomena in particular cases

2) THE ISSUE OF CONSENSUS V. CONFLICT

For all functionalist thinkers, society is treated as an integrated whole, composed of structures or
institutions which mesh closely with one another; the analogy is with the physiology of the human
body: for society to have continuing existence overtime, it's institutions must all work in harmony
with one another. Those who focus mainly on conflict stressed how society is divided into classes
with unequal resources and divisions of interests that ultimately break out into active social change
(not necessarily Marx with economic reasons, but also gender, ethnicity, politics).
As a general rule, sociologist always have to examine the connections between consensus and
conflict within societies; the values held by different groups and the goals that they remember pursue
often reflect a mixture of common and opposed interests (in Marx case capitalists and workers had
common interests of dependence but also conflicts, so that Weber argued that the future was made
of concessions and not an overthrow of the system). a useful concept for analyzing the issue of
consensus v. conflict is ideology: ideas, values and beliefs which helps secure the position of more
powerful groups at the expense of less powerful ones; they are always linked with conflicts and can
create the appearance of consensus.

For much of its history sociology had been split by the chasm between Marxism, which saw capitalism as a
more dynamic economic system leading to conflicts, and Weber, who instead also focused on non-economic
factors such as ideas and ideologies as relevant (they give a direction, they channel interests); he also
stressed the importance of science and bureaucracy. Can these traditional theories face contemporary
issues? We live in an age of huge global transformation such as the founding fathers of sociology did, so,
some sociologists consider globalization as a factor that is transforming human societies:
Þ Giddens: we live in a runaway world with new risks and uncertainties that push us towards a greater
social reflexivity, so a continuous thinking about the circumstances in which we live our lives; this is
something relatively new, since old society were grounded on customs and traditions that were
simply to be taken for granted (e.g. the impact of contraception). The notion of runaway world does
not. Imply we lost control of the future, but states have lost part of their powers (e.g. financial crisis)
while some other social movements beyond the framework of formal politics have risen in influence.
Þ Beck: we are moving towards the second modernity, in which institutions are getting global and
every day life is breaking free from tradition, creating a risk society; It is the nature of risks that is
changing because now they derive less from natural dangers and more from our own social and
technical development. An important aspect of the risk society is that the risk is not restricted
specially, temporary or socially: it affects all countries and all social classes with global, and not
merely personal, consequences (e.g. terroristic attacks). many decisions taken at the level of

13
 everyday life also have become infused with the risk (e.g. the marriage 100 years ago v. the marriage
today).
Þ Beck also involved with other sociologists into a theory called cosmopolitanism: it consists into a
critic of the nation-state-based thinking that fails to grasp that political, economic and cultural
actions, with their intended and unintended consequences, know no border; national borders are
becoming more permeable and the reality is being transformed in a cosmopolitan direction in which
considering the single state becomes narrow. A true cosmopolitan state not only fights against
terrorism but also against the causes of it, as in general does with all global problems.

CHAPTER 12 – social interaction and daily life

Nowadays social interaction means also online friends that we may or not know in the real life; sociologists
are questioning whether internet is changing even the concept of friendship; in some cases, online friends
provide real support during hard times, but the counterbalance is the uncertainty, the excessive share of
personal information, the pressure to post content and be liked, up to the bullying and cyberbullying.
Bullying involves the attempt to exercise power over others, that becomes cyberbullying when it uses
electronic forms of contact repeatedly over the time against the victim who cannot easily defend. These
social interactions are important because the realization of the individual is, in part, a social creation that
builds from all of a bunch of relationships and interactions with other people (the type quality of these
interactions is fundamental).

STUDYING THE MICRO LEVEL

When you enter a crowded place with strangers (e.g. a bus), you normally don’t speak but you have a quick
look at the other people avoiding any gesture that may be perceived as a threat or an intrusion; this is not
ignoring each other but is called civil inattention, the practice more or less conscious of avoiding direct
contact. This belongs to that bunch of daily actions we take for granted but are sociologically important;
Shultz sees them as the starting point for phenomenology, the study of how people arrive at that taken for
granted attitude and how it is reproduced in social interactions (face-to-face meetings that are enlarged by
the internet), whose can be defined as the actions and responses of people to each other's activities. The
micro-level regards what may appear as insignificant social interactions, that aren’t:
- Our daily routines and constant interactions with others give structure and form to what we do; our
lives consist in the repetition of similar patterns of behavior from day to day that we only realize
when they are disrupted (e.g. Covid)
- the study of daily life reveals how humans act creatively to shape social reality through the decisions
and actions they take; social reality is continuously modified by human interactions.
- all social institutions depend on the patterns of social interaction that we engage daily

NON-VERBAL COMMUNICATION
Social interaction involves many forms of non-verbal communication, exchanges of information and
meaning through facial expressions, gestures and movements of the body.

Human face is quite flexible and naked, capable of a wide variety of positions; without this quality, human
communication as we know it would not be possible. Humans’ emotions are simply showed on the face,
demonstrating how the social and biological spheres are intertwined (e.g. the eye-rolling). Some studies,
conducted in various ways (isolated community and deaf/blind kids), have shown that facial expression of
emptions and interpretation are innate in human beings; nevertheless, there are still cultural and social
factors that define in the most precise way the facial expression (on an innate “foundation”). By contrast,
there are no body movements or gestures that are common to all cultures or innate even if they also express
meanings; worse still, these meanings sometimes differ from what is actually conveyed by words (e.g.
blushing) and can be used by experts as a way of judging sincerity

14
Mauss is among the supporters that body language is linked to the social context and is transmitted across
generations; it is not surprising that since the social context is influential there are different perceptions of
face expressions and body movement between men and women, that involve also social classes and ethnic
dimensions. On the women perspective there are some discourse and practices that encourage them to
behave limitedly and experience their bodies as objects for others; on in contrast, men learn to experience
their bodies as active and forceful objects for themselves. This all is evident in daily interactions such as the
eye contact, the ways of sitting, the distance from the interlocutor, the expression of emotions that reinforce
patterns of gender inequality. Judith Butler expresses gender as something performative, not what you are
but what you do, since there are not biologically determined identities under the expression of gender: it is
expressed through it continuous performance; this does not mean that people have an entirely free choice
of gender identity, as performances involve regularized and repetitively produced gender norms that are
enforced by prohibitions, ostracism and censure.

People learn gender roles and gendered behavior from a very early age interactions with significant others
such as family members; gender identity (=the capacity to know who’s who and what’s what – rooted in
language) is both socially created and individual but always embodied, made and not given, fluid over the
time (continuous different interactions) but perceived by the individual as consistent and stable. A good
example of the linkage between social identity and embodiment is this study by Goffman of the stigma:
disabled people can be stigmatized on the basis of observable physical impairments, with the consequent
loss of control over the self-predestination. Identities are also multilayered and distinguished between
primary and secondary: primary identities are those formed in early age and include the gender, race,
ethnicity and perhaps also disability; secondary identities build on these and include those associated with
social roles and achieved statuses such as occupational roles and positions (social identities are quite
complex and fluid as they may change over the time). Identities mark out similarities and differences:
individual or personal identity makes one feel quite unique (e.g. uncommon first name), while collective
identities display similarity (e.g. social class, ethnic group); The important aspect is that individual and social
identities are tightly bound together within the embodied self.

ACTORS, STAGE-SETS AND COMPLEMENTARY ROLES

In many cases we engage UNFOCUSED INTERACTIONS with others, whenever people exhibit mutual
awareness of one another’s presence (e.g. busy street), even if there is a continuous non-verbal
communication occurring through physical and facial gestures. Social life involves both unfocused and
focused interactions. A FOCUSED INTERACTION happens, instead, when individuals attend directly what
others say or do. An instance of focused interaction is called encounter: they need an opening which
indicates that civil inattention is being discarded, even if when strangers meet and begin to talk that moment
is always risky, since misunderstandings can easily occur about the nature of the encounter; much of our
daily life consists of encounters with family, friends and colleagues, but also with small talks, seminar
discussions, shopping. Goffman distinguishes between the expressions the individuals give and those they
give off; the former are the words and facial expressions people use to produce to exercise a certain
impression on the others, while the latter are the clues that others may spot while checking our sincerity.

It is useful to adopt the metaphor of the theatre: we care actors who constantly play different roles on
different stages depending on the situation and the time; this third roles are socially defined our social or
social position follows. People are sensitive to how they are seen by others and use many forms of
impression management to shape the way others react to them, done in a more or less conscious way. social
roles are dependent on social status, and a person's social status often differs with the social context: you
may be a student, but also a son, a brother, a friend; people have many statuses at the same time that are
grouped into a status set. Since theologists also distinguish between ascribed and achieved statuses, in
addition to the one prioritized by society, the master status (based on gender and ethnicity).
Very interesting studies have been conducted under potential embarrassment produced by delicate
encounters between female patients and male gynecologists, in which there is the need of a dramaturgical
15
desexualization in which the patient during the examination becomes just a body. Interesting cases are the
negotiated order in public swimming pools and hot tubs, in which the close proximity of nearly naked bodies
create the risk of encounters perceived as sexual; these interactions are constructed as these desexualized
arenas in which rules and rituals have evolved in acceptable guidelines with very little variations across
cultures. The center of these interaction rituals is the maintenance of the correct personal space, which is
slightly different depending on the culture: in western societies people usually maintain a distance of at least
three feet that is reduced when people are positioned to stand by side, while in the Middle East people often
stand closer. studies have defined 4 zones of personal space:
1) intimate distance: up to 1.5 feet, it is reserved to very few social contacts such as partners and
parents, bodily touching is permitted
2) personal distance: from 1.5 to 4 feet, it is a normal spacing for encounters with friends and close
acquaintances in which some intimacy of contact is permitted but tends to be strictly limited
3) social distance: from 4 to 12 feet, it is the only usually maintained in formal settings such as interviews
4) public distance: beyond the 12 feet, it is preserved to those who are performing to an audience

Violations of the intimate and personal distances produce attempts to re-capture physical boundary; gender
issues also play a role here, because men have traditionally enjoyed a greater freedom than women in the
use of space, while the contrary is often interpreted as a flirtation (that's the reason for the new rules in
western societies).

THE RULES OF SOCIAL INTERACTION

Interaction of course mostly involves talking and conversation with others; an approach was created in the
60s regarding how people use language in ordinary life à ethnomethodology: it is the study of the folk or
lay methods people used to make sense of what others do and particularly of what they say; we apply these
methods without paying a conscious attention to them and we often make sense of what is said in a
conversation only if we know the social context, which does not appear in the words themselves. The most
inconsequential forms of everyday talk assume complicated shared understandings and knowledge, and
meaning does not belong to the individual but is produced by the interaction process; meanings are entirely
capable of being communicated to others and are widely shared (e.g. you ask what a person did yesterday
but you're not really meant every activity, rather if there is anything relevant).

Conversations are means with which our daily lives are maintained stable. We feel most comfortable when
the tacit conventions of small talk are adhered to, because in case they are breached we can feel threatened,
confused and insecure; in most everyday talks, conversants are carefully worried of changing in the others’
intonation, pauses or gestures in order to facilitate a smooth conversation. This mutual awareness makes
the conversants co-operate when opening and closing interactions and then taking turns to speak, while in
case of uncooperativeness there is the rise of tensions. Researchers analyzed street interchanges with the
methodology of the conversation analysis: it examines all facets of a conversation, from the smallest filler
words to the precise timing of interchanges, pauses, delays, interruptions and overlaps; when standard cues
for opening and closing conversations are not at adhered to, people can feel profoundly insecure. The term
interactional vandalism describes cases like this, in which a subordinate person breaks the tacit rules of
interaction; it is another example of the link between the macro level interactions and the macro level forces.

Some kind of words are not really talk but are rather exclamation, response cries (e.g. Ops!); they seem to
be reflex responses to a mishap, like blinking eyes when there is a threat, but the fact that people do not
usually make the exclamation when they are alone shows it is not just a reflex. Our response cry is normally
directed towards other people, demonstrating that the lapse is minor and momentary, not something that
should cast doubt on the command of a person's actions. Sometimes they are used by parents to cover
phases in which the child might feel a loss of control (e.g. during a jump), reassuring it and developing in it
the understanding of response cries.

16
All of our actions are distributed in time and space, but sometimes people avoid interacting with others in
some situations. During a long journey by train, interactions are brief, there is a general suspect of the other
for personal belongings, travelers adopt all sorts of behavior to appear busy or uninterested; this intentional
avoidance of interaction is called non-social transient behavior: while civil inattention acknowledges and
respects the presence of others, this behavior aims at invisibility and does not respect or acknowledge the
presence of others. This behavior occurs in closed spaces or in situations perceived as potentially dangerous,
But in general learning to become a non-social starts for new commuters very soon.

INTERACTION NORMS FOR THE DIGITAL AGE

Even with some significant differences throughout the world, the impact of ICT is now a global phenomenon
that has an impact on the individual and the society; young people especially have integrated devices as an
organic part of their lives rather than something in addition. In general, the old stable and geographically
limited relationships of the past have become rather fluid and voluntarily, based on a stronger idealized
sense of friendship and a greater freedom of expression of the individual (e.g. LGBT+); on the contrary, there
is a greater risk of cyberbullying, frauds, isolation. The general perspective is that social media may not
provide an adequate basis for ensuring relationships of care and caring, most of which do need a regular
face-to-face contact and long-term commitment.

Some see online life is this thing from human experience and as an extension of the physical social world,
since most people interact mainly with friends online that they already know from real life contact; online
and offline flow together in the life-worlds of contemporary relationships. There is a blurring of the boundary
between the private and the public (share of personal information) and the consequent emergence of norms
and rules governing interactions and exchanges, how people should behave in their online communications,
described as netiquette. The concept of role conflict helps to make sense of this situation as users attempt
to manage their different roles in relation to the different faces they present to others (people could be
friends on Twitter with their boss but this is weird and an invasion of the private sphere). Online manners
codes are likely to continue developing along with technology; at present, they seem to be based largely on
attempts to translate existing into a format which is appropriate online, rather than creating an entirely
novel system.

There is a growing interest in understanding the impact of ICT and the norms of online conduct that are
emerging:
- those who are skeptics of Internet stress the new problems that are just not found in face to face
social interactions: false identities, fraud, bullying, manipulation, that bring to the gradual erosion of
mutual trust, not only in online environments but in the wider society too.
- Internet enthusiasts argue that online interactions have some advantages over conventional forms:
physical presence may enable the display of a wider range of emotions and subtle changes of
meaning, but it also conveys information about the speakers age, gender, ethnicity and social
position that may be used to stigmatize and discriminate; electronic communication masks most or
all of these identifying markers, defining new opportunities for self-empowerment, liberation and
friendship building.

On the other hand, it seems quite common to say that the warmth and intimacy of face-to-face relationships
is unmatched by the digital world, and humans still show the compulsion to proximity: the need of
individuals to meet with one another in situations of copresence, in which they can get richer information
about other people’s sincerity

CHAPTER 20 – politics, government and social movements

POLITICAL SOCIOLOGY
Up to few years ago, politics was still seen as something for a minority of male-white-privileged people,
while nowadays it involved more women and ethnic minorities, even at the rank of the parliament; politics
17
in general is a sphere that goes well-beyond the mere elections and government, it involves groups,
networks, organizations, movements. All of our lives are touched by what happens in politics (e.g. the
pandemic) and in the political life, that is broader than government and is more concerned with power in
the broader sense. Where there is a political apparatus of government with institutions that rose over a
given territory and was backed by a legal system and the capacity to use military force, we can say that a
state exists; a majority of modern societies are nation-states in which the mass of the population consists of
citizens who regard themselves as part of a single nation. The features are:
- Sovereignty: the supreme authority over a distinct and bounded territory (conversely to what
happened in the past)
- Citizenship: people within the borders of a political system are citizens with common rights and duties
(in the past only the dominant classes or wealthy social groups belonged to a sort of political
community, and there was in general little awareness who ruled and of rights)
- Nationalism: it is a concept associated with nation states, and it consists in a set of symbols and
beliefs creating the consciousness of being part of a shared political and cultural community with a
sense of pride/identification

The meaning, nature and distribution of power are central issues for sociologists.
For Weber, power is about getting your way against the opposition from others; on his tradition, others have
distinguished forms of power that are coercive from those that have authority. Authority could be
traditional/historic, charismatic or rational-legal (power legitimized through legally enacted rules).
For Foucault power was not centered in one institution, such as the state, nor by any group of individuals,
because it was rather something operating at all levels of social interaction, in all social institutions and
through people. He also acknowledged the dualism power-knowledge: knowledge (like the educational
background of a doctor) give him power and eventually starts claiming authority over his patients; Foucault
describes the development of discourses (ways of thinking about and discussing issues) which effectively set
limits to how these are known: basically, discourse is create dominant meanings and support the claims to
knowledge and power of certain groups against alternative meanings and forms of knowledge. These ideas
gained popularity from conflict theories (first Marxist then general). Some argue that Foucault’s thinking
can't explain concentration of power in structures such as the military, political elites or higher social classes.

Many forms of political systems have been found throughout history. Authoritarian states our organization
in which popular participation is denied or severely limited; the needs and interests of the state are
prioritized over those of average citizens, no legal mechanism exists to oppose the government or remove a
leader from power. Some examples of this form of state typically define themselves as democratic: North
Korea, UAE, Myanmar deny meaningful political participation and limit severely civil liberties.
Singapore is often defined as an example of soft authoritarianism: the ruling party maintains a tight grip on
power but also ensures a high quality of life for its citizens, intervening in all aspects of society, granting
safety, civil order, social inclusion, economic success, employment, protection from poverty; as a
counterbalance, even minor transgressions are severely punished, there is a tight regulation of the media,
Internet access, satellite and police has strong powers that get up to the capital judicial punishment. There
is popular satisfaction with the government because the concerns about the lack of real democracy and the
allegations of political corruption are overridden by the economic success (testified by the reaction to the
pandemic).
Other regimes may be best characterized as semi-authoritarian or competitive authoritarian: they are
civilian regimes in which formal democratic institutions exist and are widely viewed as the primary means of
gaining power, but in which incumbents’ abuse of the state places them at a significant advantage vis-à-vis
opponents; it is the case of Russia under President Putin, in which some individual rights are evident and
periodic elections are held with representatives forming a parliament, but the power is more and more
centralized with a tight control over the mass media and the key industries. This form of state is often and
considered as a way in which authoritarian regimes can survive the increasing pressure of citizens towards
democracy.
18
Democracy is a political system in which it is the people, and not the monarchs or aristocracies, that rule; it
has taken contrasting forms at varying periods and in different societies: people have been understood as
men, owners of property, educated men, all adults. The form that democracy takes in a certain context is
the outcome of how values and goals are understood and prioritized:
- Direct participatory democracy: it is the case of ancient Greece but also in modern society of the
“annual town meeting” or referenda
- Representative democracy: It is due to large populations

According to some people, democracies are just an appearance, while the sovereignty does not really belong
to people; there are two interpretations:
1) ELITARIAN RULE: democracy is seen as a sham or a mirage, because the reality was, is and is going to
be that a minority (=elite) rules over the majority.
o Pareto: uses the term elite to describe the governing or ruling groups in contrast with the
masks; nevertheless, the elite group is also divided into those who govern and those who play
no part in it. The common trait is a superior intelligence, so the governing elite must draw
from different strata, including the masses, if it is to be successful and get all the human
resources available; history shows that an elite major role for a time, but it's inevitable that
we'll eventually be replaced in the continuous change in their participants but never of the
principle itself
o Mosca: again divide society in a smaller ruling class and a large ruled class; the elite is a
coalition of people drawn from the military, religious, academia and other social groups with
special talents or powerbases there's allow the monopolization of power and the domination
of the masses.
o Michels: not only the elites rise at the top of the state apparatus, but this happens in all
organizations across society, it is the iron law of the oligarchy, the inevitable rule of the few;
the power flows upwards and concentrates in the hands of few in our increasingly
bureaucratic and organized world. A counterbalance to what Michels stated is the continuous
enlargement of enterprises that imply a loose in power relationships (delegation) that
become more fluid, as a result of a more globalized globe; nevertheless, this is a slow process
that takes time to expand: right now, the political class for example is still made up
predominantly by privately educated people

2) BUREAUCRACY: the term is coined by the Greek, and it refers to “the rule of the officials”. Since the
very beginning it has been seen as a powerful, yet irrational instrument made up of men who lacked
of sensitivity and compassion; complex modern society needs some form of organization if things are
to run smoothly, but many people still organizations in a negative light as blocking individual
creativity, resulting in a paradox: how can bureaucracy be something unhelpful and necessary at the
same time? Weber stressed an interpretation focused on the control of information and the
important of the written process, the need of written rules thanks to which the organization can run;
he constructed an ideal-typical bureaucracy that, an abstract description constructed by
accentuating certain features of real cases so as to pinpoint their most essential characteristics, had
several features:
o There is a clear hierarchy of authority with tasks distributed in a pyramidal way and with each
higher office that controls and supervises the one below it
o Written rules for the conduct of officials at all levels
o full time salaried individuals with their perspective of making career through promotions
based on capability and seniority (or both)
o separation between private and public life
o no ownership of the resources of work (office, appliances)

19
The bureaucratic machine could be inefficient and offered little opportunity for creativity, but it is the price
we have to pay for technical effectiveness.

Some argued that Weber’s account is a partial one, with little to say about the informal life, which,
sometimes, is even more important than the formal one (e.g. you learn a job by doing it on a practical level);
moreover, Weber also showed little consideration about the potential destructiveness of bureaucracy, as
showed by the Holocaust or the huge amount of information nowadays democratic countries hold of their
citizens. Du Gay opposes saying that bureaucracy shall be defended because the horrible things like the
Holocaust could have been done because the Nazi overcame the existent ethical and legitimate procedures
that are integral to the bureaucratic structure; unquestioning allegiance to the Furer was asked and it
prevented the equal and impartial treatment of all citizens

An inescapable aspect of political sociology is the study of political ideas, ideologies empirical theory and
their impact in shaping societies:
- political idea: they are concepts such as equality, justice, freedom and individual rights that are used
in a variety of ways even by people we would never see themselves as political
- political theory: it is a concept traceable to the engine grease and it's philosophers, will not only try
to understand the world but also tackled thorny moral normative questions
- ideology: its interpretation is more complex. For Marx, ideology was produced by ruling classes as a
mean of mystifying social life (negative conception); in the 18th century, ideology was used to
describe a potential science of ideas and knowledge, the systematic study and comparison of ideas
(neutral conception, ideas were not biased); in the 30s/40s the sociology of knowledge linked
particular modes of thought to their social class bases: people view the world from a particular
perspective rooted in their material life and therefore the ideas and knowledge they produce can be
only partial, while the aim was to bring them together for a more comprehensive view of society as
a whole. In this latter interpretation, ideologies are worldviews that contain guides to political action;
There are three classical political ideologies:
a) conservatism à seeks to defend the status quo
b) liberalism à promoted individualism, free markets
c) socialism à promotes a new society rooted in cooperation and community

Divisions between these groups were predominantly economic but are still behind the modern
left/right ones; other ideologies can be added to spectrum, such as Nazism or Fascism, and even
more can be drafted from the most important issues of feminism, environmentalism and religious
fundamentalisms.
One political ideology that resurged in the 21st century is populism (national populism), even if it is
mostly a label adopted by others rather than by populists themselves; it is not a fully formed political
ideology because it does not have major figures (there are some charismatic ones but have other
political affiliations), texts and manifestos, but it's more like a style of politics that represents society's
main conflict as that between the people and the elites. The concept of people is sociologically vague,
even if populists frame a crisis based on the preservation of national identities in contrast to
migrations (at the extreme, it is cause of xenophobia and racism); rude, intolerant and impolite
language appeals to those who have become disillusioned with formal politics, but nowadays the
spectrum of people appealed by populism with enlarging (no longer only the angry white man).

The reason for this new range of ideological perspectives is the post-industrial era, endowed with
new social movements like environmentalists and feminists; another reason is the collapse of Soviet
communism; thirdly, globalization brought different cultures and societies into contact with one
another in more systematic ways, causing a reaction against the perceived decadence and moral
decline of modern societies from fundamentalist religious groups who was that ideologies are rooted

20
 in particular interpretations of religious texts (often, the consequence is also in opposition to aspects
of modern life such as homosexuality and abortion).
Ideologies change and develop in relation to one another and also enrich their content basing on
different movements (e.g. socialism is endowed with embryonal feminism and environmentalism);
during the 70s scholars have claimed the end of ideology, but the concept has repeatedly bounced
back.

CHAPTER 9 – stratification and social class

More advantaged families are able to protect low-attaining children from slipping down the social hierarchy,
while children from less advantaged families that are high attainers tend to be less likely to transform that
early capabilities in highly remunerative jobs; wealthy families can create a glass floor preventing their kids
to fall down the social hierarchy. Tales of success that appear to be rooted in personal commitment cannot
be separated from patterns of advantage/disadvantage in the wider society, so we could say that societies
are patterned/stratified and the position of the individual significantly influences its life chances. The
concept of social stratification describes structured inequalities between social groups within societies that
are not merely property/assets, but more like gender, age, ethnicity, religious affiliation; individuals have
unequal access to rewards based on their position in the hierarchy:
- The rankings applied to social categories of people who share common characteristics without
necessarily interacting or identifying; Individuals may move between categories but the category
itself continues to exist
- people's life experiences and opportunities depend on the relative ranking of their social category
- the ranks of social categories tend to change only slowly

in the first societies there was very little social stratification, which started only with saddlery culture and
then slowly towards the industrial and postindustrial societies that, more than happy your mid, resemble a
teardrop: there is a large number of people in the middle and lower middle ranks, a smaller number at the
very bottom and few at the very top.

We can identify 4 basic systems of stratification:

1) slavery: it is the most extreme one in which some people are owned by others; the legal conditions
of slavery changed and nowadays it is internationally forbidden, considered a significant violation of
human rights. In the past, some slaves were deprived of almost all rights by law; in some ancient
Greek societies some slaves had responsibilities, literacy, roles in the government even if they were
excluded from political positions; slowly they fought back against their subjection producing
instability in the systems, in which high productivity could no longer be achieved; from the 18th
century onwards, in Europe and America slavery was objected on moral grounds. Today, there are
still slaves that may be too traumatized to reveal their situation or may not even recognize that they
are victims, while globalization paradoxically facilitates forced movements of modern slaves across
the world.
2) Caste: it is a system of stratification in which social position is given and all individuals remain at the
social level of their birth; the social status is unchangeable and based on personal characteristics such
as race, ethnicity, skin color, parental religion or parental caste.
In Europe, Jews were frequently treated as a separate caste, forced to live separately from the rest
of societies in ghettos and to marry within the very same social group as a result of a custom or a low
(endogamy), because contacts with the outside of the caste was strongly discouraged.
In the Indian case the stratification reflects Hindu religious beliefs and it is at least 2000 years old;
there is the caste of scholars and spiritual leaders, of soldiers and rulers, of farmers and merchants,
of laborers and artisans, but beneath the 4 strata there are the untouchables, oppressed people to
be avoided at all costs. This system is nowadays hard to maintain because of the modern capitalistic
economy, besides the formal removal in 1949.

21
 South Africa had a caste system called apartheid up to 1992, in which Indians, black Africans,
coloureds and Asians were separated from whites; the basis was clearly the racial identification,
which allowed only 15% of the total population to control virtually all the country's wealth. The
African National Congress mobilized an economically devastating global boycott on South African
businesses, forcing the white leaders to dismantle the system by popular vote in 1992; 2 years later,
Nelson Mandela, the leader of the African National Congress, was elected president, after spending
27 years in jail.
3) Estates: it was the specification system of the European feudal societies, that consisted in different
obligations towards one another and an equal set of rights; the highest state was composed of the
aristocracy and the Gentry, the clergy formed another is date with a lower status but some
distinguished privileges, the third estate were the commoners (merchants, serfs, free peasants,
artisans). a certain degree of intermarriages and mobility was tolerated: commoners may be knighted
or merchants could sometimes purchase titles; something similar still persists in Great Britain.
4) Class: a class is a large scale group of people who share common economic resources and social
status, which strongly influenced the type of lifestyles they are able to lead; earning the properties,
wealth and occupation are the main basis of class differences, which are also:
a) Fluid, with boundaries between classes that are never clear cut and without formal restrictions
on intermarriage
b) positions are, at least partially, achieved, so there is social mobility
c) class is economically based
d) are large scale and impersonal

Most of sociological theories regarding stratification involve Marx and Weber.

Marx never really spoke directly of the concept of class, which had been reconstructed from his writings but
it is sometimes debated
Weber spoke of class acknowledging the conflicts over power and resources, but maintained a broader and
multidimensional view of society in which he also took into account status and party, so in total his analysis
consists in three elements in overlapping.
- Economic reasons: apart from the ownership of the means of production, they include also skills, and
qualifications as influential for the market position a person is going to reach
- Status: it refers to the differences between groups in the social honor or prestige they are accorded
by others; it can’t be any longer based on the personal knowledge of the single individual since
societies became increasingly complex, so we refer to a person’s lifestyle (style of life). People that
share a status form a community in which there is a sense of identity.
- Party: in Weber’s sense, the term refers to a group of individuals who work together in an organized
fashion towards a specific goal which is in the interest of its membership.

Olin Wright tried to bring together Marx and Weber by looking at the issue of how much control different
social classes have in the production process, identifying three classes:
1) Control over investments or money capital
2) Control over the physical means of production – land or factories and offices
3) Control over labor power

Between the traditional division proletariat-industrials there are contradictory class locations such as
managers and white-collars, who are able to influence some aspects of production but are denied others,
are partially exploited and partially exploiters; two factors are considered in these cases:
a) Relationship to authority
b) Possession of skills and expertise

It is interesting to say that in the end of the 20th inequalities started being studied not only In class terms,
but involving also gender, race, ethnicity and so on; if we are to understand the lives of people in
22
contemporary societies, we have to find ways of connecting class with other inequalities. To this purpose,
intersectionality posits race, class, gender, sexuality, ability, and various aspects of identity as constitutive;
each informs the other and taken together they produce a way of experiencing the world as sometimes
oppressed and marginalized and sometimes oppressor and advantaged depending on the context. This
approach tends to adopt qualitative methods they are able to tap into people’s real-life experiences, but
issues still not figured out are all the proper aspects to cover in order to validate findings and the relative
weight to give to different categories.

-> INTERSECTING INEQUALITIES

Latter half of 20th century: exploration of other types of inequality -> gender, ethnicity, sexuality,
disability.
However, theories used to study social class were seen to be not as easily transferred to other categories.
According to Crenshaw and Collins, in order to understand the lives of people today class will have to be
connected in some way with other types on inequality:
Intersectionality: complex interweaving of diverse social inequalities which shapes individual lives and
complicates the early sample class analysis.
This kind of research typically involves:
• seeking to understand the real lives of individuals within their social context
• interest in the operation of power as it is maintained and reinforced through the main axes of class,
gender and ethnicity
It point that these categories of inequality are constitutive, each informs the other.
Intersectional research tends to adopt qualitative methods that are able to tap into people’s real-life
experiences.
Problems that are still being worked through:
• Et cetera problem: number of categories to be studied
• Weight of different categories

MAPPING THE CLASS STRUCTURE

Both theoretical and empirical studies have investigated the link between class position and other
dimensions of social life. Yet the concept of class is far from clear-cut.

-> CLASS POSITION AS OCCUPATION?

Sociologists have operationalised (concept transformed into a measurable variable) class through various
schemes attempting to map its structure.
A common feature of most of these schemes is that they are based on occupational structure, as
occupation plays an important role in determining social position, life chances and level of material
comfort.
These schemes take various forms.
• Goldthorpe’s EGP class schema
Created a scheme for use in empirical research on social mobility, designed as a representation of the
‘relational’ nature of the contemporary class structure.
He has emphasised employment relations, drawing attention to different types of employment
contract
o Labor contract: exchange of wages and effort -> working class
o Service contract: prospective element, possibility of salary growth or promotion -> service class
This scheme is widely used in UK, Europe, North America and Australia.
The mapping of social structure remains a critical issue and was made even more problematic by the rapid
economic transformation in the 70s.

CLASS DIVISIONS IN THE DEVELOPED WORLD

23
-> THE QUESTION OF THE UPPER CLASS
Capitalist class whose wealth and power is derived from profit-making in global markets.
To Goldthorpe, the upper class is so small that it is difficult to build into representative social surveys.
The certain thing is that amounts of wealth are concentrated in the hands of a small minority of individuals
and families.
The pattern of wealth distribution is unequal both on the national and even more on the global level ->
gross inequalities between industrialised countries and developing-world countries.
Still, the “rich” do not constitute a homogeneous groups, as people following varying trajectories into and
out of wealth.
Scott found three particular groups
• Senior executive in large corporations
• Industrial entrepreneurs
• Finance capitalists
The upper class consists of a small minority of individuals who have both wealth and power and are able to
transmit their privileges to their children (top 1% of wealth owners); below them are the service class and
the intermediate class -> middle class.

-> THE EXPANDING MIDDLE CLASS

Broad spectrum of people working in many different occupations, there is a lot of diversity which also
includes status situations and life chances.
Members of the middle class can sell their mental and physical labor power to earn a living.
It is not internally cohesive.
White-collar groups (in professional, managerial and administrative positions) have been among the fastest
growing ones since the early 19th century, coming to form what many believe to be a separate social class,
Goldthrope’s “service class” or for others “professional/managerial class”.
White collar professional often join together to maximise their interests -> Weber’s social closure: erection
and maintenance of boundaries by social and occupational groups, which restrict entry and enforce rules
for members (medical professionals).

-> THE CHANGING WORKING CLASS

Reduced its size because of the expansion of the middle class (around 15% of the population today).
Their living conditions and lifestyles have substantially improved in recent years and in developed
countries the majority of them no longer lives in poverty.
Embourgeoisement thesis: process of people becoming middle class as a result of increasing affluence,
possible route towards a middle-class society.
Goldthorpe set out to test this hypothesis -> The Affluent Worker study
Found very little support for the thesis, as thus relative affluence came along with jobs characterised by
poor benefits, low changes of promotion and little job satisfaction. They also didn’t associate with white-
collar workers in leisure time and their socialising was still limited at home with family members.
So the theory was wrong, however, Goldthorpe did concede the possibility of some convergence between
lower middle class and upper working class.
IS THERE AN UNDERCLASS?
Segment of the population located at the very bottom of the class structure, whose members have
significantly lower living standards than the majority, an many are among the long term unemployed.
This debate originated in the US, and an important contribution was made by Murray, who argued that
African Americans in the US are at the bottom of society as a result of unintended consequences of state
welfare policies. Similar to the “culture of poverty” thesis, people becoming dependent on welfare and
having little incentive to find work, communities or stable marriages -> dependency culture.
The concept of underclass is less effective in European countries and remains more useful in the US. In
Europe many researchers prefer the term “social exclusion”

24
->CLASS AND LIFESTYLES
Recently it has been argued that we should evaluate class location not only, or even mainly, in terms of
economics and employment but also in relation to cultural factors such as lifestyles and consumption
patterns.
French sociologist Bourdieu argued that lifestyle choices are an important indicator of class -> 4 forms of
capital that characterize class position:
• Economic capital
• Cultural capital, often people distinguish themselves from other more on its basis than economic
capital: education, appreciation of the arts, consumption and leisure pursuits
• Social capital: resources that individuals or groups gain through their network of friends and
contacts (with influential families and other powerful contacts)
• Symbolic capital: possession of a “good reputation”, similar to social status, people’s assessment of
us.
However, this doesn’t mean that social class is no longer relevant.
Savage in 2013 derived a ‘new model’ of the class system in the UK, which found a fragmentation of the
conventional working and middle classes but also suggested that an elite exists at the top of society with
very high economic, cultural and social capitals. At the bottom there is what they call ‘precariat’, with low
cultural, economic and social capitals, who tend to be located in old industrial areas, characterized by high
levels of insecurities and work often from the gig economy.
This suggests a polarization in inequality in 21st century Britain.
So, despite his theory even Bourdieu underlines that we cannot ignore the critical role played by economic
factors in the reproduction of social inequalities; in the present period, lifestyle choices may be increasingly
constrained by the economic situation and class position.

-> GENDER AND STRATIFICATION

For many years, research on stratification was ‘gender-blind’, yet gender itself is one of the most profound
examples of social stratification.
One of the main problems is whether we can understand gender inequalities today in terms of class
divisions.
These inequalities are more deep-rooted historically than class systems, yet class divisions are so
fundamental to modern capitalist societies they overlap with gender inequalities (a woman’s material
position tends to be that of her father or partner), so gender inequality can still in some way be explained
in class terms.
DETERMINING WOMEN’S CLASS POSITION
The view that class inequalities govern gender stratification was an unstated research assumption until the
late 20th century.
The conventional position in class analysis was that women’s paid work is relatively insignificant compared
with that of men.
According to Goldthorpe, this is not sexist, however, him and his schema were have been highly criticized
• Women’s income is essential to maintaining the family’s economic position and lifestyle.
• A woman’s occupation may set the social class for the household
• In cross-class households (different category of work for men and women), it may be more realistic
to treat men and women as being in different class positions.
• The proportion of households in which women are sole breadwinners is increasing.
THE IMPACT OF WOMEN’S EMPLOYMENT ON CLASS DIVISIONS
Significant impact on household incomes.
A growing number of women are moving into more prestigious positions, earning a higher salary,
contributing to the polarization between one-income households and two-income households.
Moreover, marriage tends to produce partnerships where both individuals are relatively privileged or
disadvantaged in terms of occupational attainment.
The impact of dual-earner partnerships is heightened by the rising child-bearing age.
25
SOCIAL MOBILITY
Movement of individuals and groups between socio-economic positions.
• Vertical mobility: up or down the socioeconomic scale
o Upwardly mobile
o Downwardly mobile
• Lateral mobility: geographical movement between neighborhoods or regions.
Often combined.
Two ways of studying social mobility
• Intragenerational mobility: individual careers
• Intergenerational mobility: mobility across generations, how far children enter the same type of
occupation as their parents or grandparents

-> COMPARATIVE MOBILITY STUDIES

The amount of vertical mobility in a society is a major index of its ‘openness’ and has become a political
issue.
How open are industrialized countries?
Blau and Duncan conducted the most detailed investigation of social mobility in a single country.
US:
• Much vertical mobility but not long-range, which remained rare.
• Downward movement much less common than upward mobility
They emphasized the importance of education and training on an individual’s chances for success.
Lipset and Bendix carried out the most celebrated international study of social mobility, analyzing 9
industrialized societies and concentrating on the mobility from blue-collar jobs to white-collar ones.
• No evidence that the US are more open than European countries.
• All industrialized countries experienced similar changes in their occupational structure

-> DOWNWARD MOBILITY

Less common than upward mobility but still a widespread phenomenon, quite often associated with
psychological problems and anxieties (individuals are unable to sustain the lifestyles to which they have
been accustomed).
Main source: redundancy
In the US, between the 80s and 90s a general downturn in the average real earnings has been observed, as
a result of corporate restructuring and downsizing.
Downward mobility is particularly common among divorced or separated women with children.

-> SOCIAL MOBILITY IN BRITAIN

Extensively studied over the post-war period.
• Glass: important early study; analyzed inter generational mobility for a long period up to the 50s:
concluded that Britain was no a particularly open society.
o A good deal of mobility occurred, but most of it was short range.
o Upward mobility much more common than downward.
o Most was concentrated in the middle ranges of the class structure
• Goldthorpe: study in the 1980, investigated how social mobility had changed since Glass’s work
o Overall level of mobility was higher
o More long-range movement
This was probably due to the acceleration in the growth of higher white-collar jobs.
• Jackson and Goldthorpe: 2007 study
o Decline in long-range mobility
Concluded that there can be no return to the rising rates of upward mobility experienced in the mid
20th century.
26
 • UK’s Social Mobility Commission: 2019 report
o Social mobility has stagnated since 2015
More advanced social groups are more likely to create a glass floor, preventing their children from falling
into low-paid work -> existence of a sticky ceiling: it is much more likely that those born into wealthier and
professional families at the top of the income scale will stay there for a long time, thus reducing the
opportunities for social mobility from below.

-> GENDER AND SOCIAL MOBILITY

More attention is now paid to patterns of mobility among women, as long-standing gender inequalities
may be relaxing their hold.
• Twenty-Something in the 90s: study of the UK’ Economic and Social Research Council
o The young people who coped best with the transition to adulthood were those who had
obtained a better education, postponed children and marriage, and had fathers in
professional occupations.
o Individuals from disadvantaged backgrounds tended to stay there.
o Women have more opportunities than their counterparts in the previous generation.
Middle-class women have benefited most from this, as they are just as likely as their male peers to go to
university and move to well-paid jobs.
So, women’s chances of gaining a good career are improving, however, two major obstacles remain:
1. Male managers and employers still discriminate against women applicants, mainly because of a
belief that women are not really interested in their career and will likely leave to start a family
2. Women are effectively forced to choose between a career and having children

MERITOCRACY AND THE PERSISTENCE OF SOCIAL CLASS

• Saunders is one of the most vocal critics of the whole British tradition of social mobility research.
According to him, intelligence, ability and effort are the key factors in occupational background; he
showed that children who are bright and hard-working succeed regardless of their social advantages
or disadvantages.
Britain may be an unequal society, but it is a fair one.
• Breen and Goldthorpe in response accused him of introducing bias in his research, excluding
respondents who were unemployed.
They came to radically different conclusions: they concede that individual merit is a contributory
factor in class position but maintain that ‘class of origin’ remains a powerful influence.
o In unequal societies around the world, there is less social mobility
o Movement more difficult for those in lower positions
Inequality seems to impede fair outcomes and in order to move to a genuine meritocracy
inequalities need to be reduced.
In conclusion, people’s lives are never completely determined by class position, and people do experience
social mobility.
Yet, as underlined by the UK Social Mobility Commission, class ultimately does play a big role in the ability
to move up or down the income and jobs ladder.

CHAPTER 11 – poverty, social exclusion and welfare

POVERTY
->DEFINING POVERTY
It’s difficult to arrive to a shared agreed scientific definition.
The World Bank defined poverty as pronounced deprivation in well-being, which raises the question of
what constitutes well-being.
In the relatively wealthy societies having the resources to maintain good health, have a good education or
to have sufficient food usually depends on income, but other criteria are used too.
Being in poverty or pronounced deprivation means not having enough income to gain such resources.
27
 • Absolute poverty: ‘extreme poverty’, grounded on the idea of subsistence, the basic conditions
that must be met in order to sustain a physically healthy existence, including sufficient food, shelter
and clothing. The standards of human subsistence are pretty much the same for all people of
equivalent age and physique anywhere in the world. It’s rare in industrialized countries.
• Relative poverty: in economic terms, people who live in a household who is disposable income is
less than 60% of the national median in that country; This was 22.4% of the population in 2017.
Many scholars do not accept that it is possible to identify a universal standard of absolute poverty, and
argue that it’s more appropriate to use the concept of relative poverty, which links deprivation to the
overall standard of living in a particular society.
Human needs are not everywhere identical: in most industrialized societies, running water, flush toilets
and the regular consumption of fruits and vegetables are regarded as basic necessities, so people without
them can be said to live in the relative poverty; however, in the global south these elements are not
standard for majority of population, so poverty there shouldn’t be measured according to them.
So, even the definition of absolute poverty proves to be relative time and place.
The concept of relative poverty has its own complexities as well, in fact, criteria of relative poverty are
gradually adjusted upwards and many argue whether poverty even still exist in developed economies,
given the large presence of a variety of consumer goods.

->HOW MUCH POVERTY?

OFFICIAL MEASUREMENTS OF POVERTY
Since the 1980s most European states have defined poverty as living in a household with an income on or
below 60% of the national median household income HBAI ‘households below average income’.
The UK labor government adopted this measure as well from 1999 as it allows properly levels to be tracked
over time.
The European union has adopted a measure known as the ‘at risk of poverty social exclusion rate’ AROPE
which involves three measures:
• people at risk of income poverty: those below the 1980 threshold
• those in material deprivation: inability to pay for goods such as electrical appliances or to pay rent
or utility bills
• those living in households with a very low work intensity: the members work collectively less than
1/5 of the time they could have done in a given year
Combining poverty and social exclusion allows for a broader comparison of cross-national disadvantage
and inequality, but it also adds a layer of complexity to comparative statistical analysis.
POVERTY AND RELATIVE DEPRIVATION
Several studies have been carried out which define poverty as a type of deprivation.
• Townsend’s study in the late 50s: Poverty in the United Kingdom
Concentrated on peoples subjective experience and understanding of poverty, trying to establish
exactly what poverty means in terms of deprivation. He selected twelve items and calculated the
proportion of population deprived of them.
The survey revealed a threshold for levels of income below which social deprivation rose rapidly,
which he described as suffering from poverty, forming 22.9% of the population.
Townsend observed that as household income falls, so families withdraw from taking part in quite
ordinary activities, essentially becoming socially excluded.
His study was the basis for numerous sociological studies and helped to fully understand how poverty
and deprivation are inextricably linked.
• Mack and Lansley: building from Townsend’s definition of poverty and deprivation elaborated two
influential
studies of relative poverty in the UK, in 1983 and 1990.
o The 1983 survey estimated that around 7.5% million people in the UK lived in poverty, about 14% of
the population.

28
 o In 1990 the growth in poverty during the 80s had driven the number of people living in poverty to
11 million.
• Gordon, 2000: Millennium Survey of Poverty and Social Exclusion, PSE Survey
Using a questionnaire to determine what people considered necessities for acceptable standard of
life, the survey found the 26% of the sample like to two or more necessities meaning that they could
be classified as being in relative poverty.
Comparing Gordon’s study to Mack and Lansley’s we can observe that the number of households
lacking three or more socially perceived necessities had increased substantially.
• Palmer’s 2006 study re-analyzed some data from Gordon’s PSE survey and found that the issue of
lacking necessities was money-related.
What was surprising, was that a significant minority of household on average income is reported that
they cannot afford these items either. What is needed in addition is qualitative information about
exactly why households cannot afford such items.

->THE RISK OF BECOMING POOR

The risk of being in poverty is higher for some social groups than for others, for instance children, women,
some minority ethnic groups and out and older people are among the highest risk groups.
Those who are disadvantaged or discriminated against in other aspects have a higher chance of being poor.
CHILDREN
• Platt: Children not only face high-risk of poverty but they are particularly vulnerable to its negative
consequences, and the effects are both long-term and emerge early in life, for instance they tend to
have worse health, are more likely to be of low birth weight, or to be injured or killed and road
accidents, more likely to suffer abuse and self harm, or attempt suicide; they are also less likely to
do well in school and more likely be poor as adults.
In the UK Labor’s 2010 child poverty act set a legal requirement for the eradication of child poverty by
2020 which however was slow down both by changes in government and also by the 2008 financial crash.
An analysis suggested that poverty began to rise in 2013 and by 2015 29% of children in the UK were living
in poverty. In 2019 30% of UK children were living in poverty by 2017-2018 and the number was rising.
In conclusion, eliminating child poverty cannot be achieved by short-term economic and social policies but
requires consistently applied measures over a long time period.
WOMEN
Women are more likely to be poor than men (58% of adults living in poverty).
Complex causes:
• Gender division of labor both inside and outside home. Women are for more likely than men to be
in part-time employment and earn less as a result, and more likely to be alone parent household.
• Occupational segregation, what is considered as a man’s job and a woman’s job, in the labor force
remains entrenched.
• Women are disproportionately represented in this world paid industries
MINORITY ETHNIC GROUPS
Higher rates of poverty exist in the UK for all black and minority ethnic groups.
They are more likely to have poorly paid jobs, to struggle at school, to live in deprived areas and in poor
quality housing, and to suffer health problems.
This phenomenon proved to be remarkably resistant to change.
Recently, the concept of intersectionality has become more important in attempts to understand the
differentiated experience not just of poverty but also social life as a whole; it refers to the way that the
varied aspects of an individuals identity interact to produce complex patterns of inequality, poverty and
discrimination.
Analyzing the ways in which the varied elements of individual identities intersect to produce widely
different outcomes in real relation to poverty is likely to become more commonplace in sociology.

29
However, it’s also important to remember that there are structured patterns of disadvantage involving
minority ethnic groups that influence life chances of individuals and the choices they are able to make to
shape their futures.
OLDER PEOPLE
As life expectancy increases, so does the number of older people in the population. Additionally, many
people who may have been quite well paid in the working lives experiences sharp reduction in income and
status when they retired, with a large proportion falling into relative poverty.
However this situation has changed significantly, in fact, the extent of pension your poverty has fallen
sharply over the years. Based on the HBAI the proportion of pensioners living in poverty decreased from
over 40% in 1990 to 16% in 2017-2018.
The number of passengers on low income does tend to increase with age, though not for all groups.
Those with additional private pension provision are less likely to experience poverty, and there is a clear
gender dimension to this.
In recent decades, older women in those from ethnic minorities are more likely to experience poverty than
other pensioner groups.

->EXPLAINING POVERTY
• Theories that see individuals as responsible for their own poor situation: 19th century belief that
poverty was the result of individual inadequacy or pathology (creation of workhouses).
Murray: There was an emerging under class who did not seek personal responsibility for their own
proper team, forming a dependency culture associated to the growth of the welfare state, which he
believed eroded people’s incentive to work. His views resonated in many developed economies,
especially in the UK. However, there is no convincing evidence linking poverty to an under class of
work-shy people.
• Theories that view poverty as produced and reproduced by structural forces in society:
emphasizes larger social processes which produce conditions of poverty that are difficult for
individuals to overcome. Structural forces within society shapes the way in which resources are
distributed. This apparent lack of ambition is actually a consequence of peoples constrained
situation, not the cause of it.
Tawney: saw poverty as an aspect of social inequality, which led to extremes of both wealth and
poverty. The key to tackling poverty was to reduce structural social inequality, which requires policy
measures and distributing income and resources more equally throughout society.
Hutton argued that the process of economic reconstructing during the 70s and 80s created new
social divisions between the disadvantaged (seeking employment), the marginalized insecure (low
income) and the privileged (secure full-time employment or self-employment with high salaries),
concluding that levels of poverty have to be seen as intimately connected to the structural,
socioeconomic shifts in society.
Standing argues that the 2008 financial crisis drew attention to the recent emergence of a precariat,
outside of the conventional social class schemes of sociology, arising from the increasingly insecure
situation in which many groups of workers find themselves, under conditions of flexible working, the
gig economy, neoliberal economy and globalization. This group makes up around 25% of the adult
population of many countries that lack several or all the main aspects of security afforded by
citizenship and industrial economies. He adopts an economic restructuring explanation for the rise
and growth of precariat globalization processes in the early 70s brought new industrializing countries
with relatively low labor costs into the global market, which produces a serious weakening of workers
bargaining position in the industrialized countries and the parallel growth of chronic insecurity.
To sum up, the decisions and choices made by individuals always take place within social contexts that are
not entirely of their own making.

->POVERTY AND SOCIAL MOBILITY

30
Peoples trajectories into and out of poverty over time-> Jenkins likens the distribution of income to a
multi-storey apartment building, with rich people being in the band House and the poorest ones in the
basement, with the majority in the floors in-between.
In the 1990s the British household panel survey showed that just over half of the individuals who were in
the bottom fifth quintile by income in 1991 were in the same category in 1996.
However, it also shows that many families which move out of poverty have a higher risk of re-entering the
category later.
These findings have led to a new understanding of the quite fluid patterns into an out of poverty.
Longitudinal research shows that poverty is not simply the result of social forces acting on passive
individuals.
Even those who are severely disadvantaged can seize opportunities to improve their economic position.
Nonetheless, moving out of poverty has its challenges and obstacles, and staying out of it over the long
term seems to be difficult.

SOCIAL EXCLUSION
Refers to the ways in which individuals may become cut off from full participation in the wider society.
It’s been used by sociologists to explore emerging sources of inequality and continues to inform applied
social research into multiple sources of disadvantage.
It raises the question of personal responsibility: individuals can find themselves excluded as a result of
decisions taken by others, or social exclusion may also result from people excluding themselves.
We must always be conscious of the interaction between human agency and the role of social forces in
shaping peoples circumstances.
A useful way of thinking about this concept is to differentiate between weak and strong versions of the
concept:
• Weak: see the central issue simply as one of trying to ensure the inclusion of those who are
currently socially excluded.
• Strong: seek social inclusion as well but also try to tackle some of the processes through which
relatively powerful social groups can exercise their capacity to exclude
The version adopted by governments will shape their policy towards social exclusion.

->DIMENSIONS OF SOCIAL EXCLUSION

2000 Poverty and Social Exclusion Survey distinguished four dimensions of social exclusion:
• poverty or exclusion from adequate income or resources
• labor market exclusion: work is important for the individual both for income and social
interactions. It can lead to poverty, service exclusion and exclusion from social relations. However,
it cannot eat itself be seen as a sign of social exclusion, but it can significantly increase the risk of
wider social exclusion.
• service exclusion: lack of access to basic services
o Individual, one cannot afford
o Collective, services unavailable to whole communities
• exclusion from social relations: people may be unable to participate in common social activities, be
isolated from friends and family or face like of practical and emotional support in times of need.
People are excluded from social relations through a lack of civil engagement.
o People seeking asylum
HOMELESSNESS
Extreme form of exclusion, people lacking a permanent residence may be shut out of many everyday
activities.
Most homeless people are in some form of temporary accommodation, however a minority of people do
choose to sleep on the streets.
The majority of rough sleepers have been pushed into homelessness by domestic violence, unemployment,
loss of a partner etc.
31
About a quarter of them are associated to mental illness, however, most people are simply individuals who
find themselves on the street because they have experienced various personal crises.
Becoming homeless is rarely the outcome of a direct cause-effect sequence, a number of misfortunes may
occur in quick succession, resulting in a powerful downward spiral.
Those who are the most vulnerable of people from the lower working class, who have no specific job skills
and very low incomes.
However, this is not simply personal problem: rising levels of homelessness are the products of changes in
government policy and much broader economic factors.
Despite the possible temporary accommodation solutions, families spend months and even years before a
more permanent placement becomes available.
Since 2010 the level of homelessness have been rising very rapidly due to:
• a failure to build enough social housing
• the high cost of private sector rents
• welfare reform in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis

THE WELFARE STATE

In the global north and in much of the south, poverty and social exclusion or alleviated to some degree by
the welfare state. The state plays a central role in the provision of Social Security and welfare, which it
does by providing services and benefits to meet the basic needs of its citizens in healthcare, education,
housing and minimum income levels.
One of the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic is surely a renewed interest in what welfare states should
and can afford to provide.

-> THEORIES OF THE WELFARE STATE

Most countries in the world today are, to varying degrees, welfare states.
They are about social insurance, social rights, social provision, and the regulation of economic action.
The important role of the welfare state involves managing the risks faced by people over the course of
their lives: sickness, disability, topless and all date.
The services provided vary from country to country:
• Some highly developed systems devote a large proportion of the national budget to them: Sweden,
Belgium and Austria
• Others, on the other hand take far less in tax: UK, Germany, USA.
While Marxists’ and functionalists’ general theory perspectives have been useful points of orientation, the
ideas of Marshall and Esping-Andersen have been particularly influential contributions to theories of
welfare state.
• Marshall: The evolution of citizenship in Britain
Three key stages
o 18th century: civil rights -> personal liberties (freedom of speech, thought and religion; right to
property and to a fair legal treatment)
o 19th century: political rights -> right to vote, to hold office and to participate in the political process
o 20th-century: social rights -> economic and social security, enshrined in the Welfare State.
The rights associated with social citizenship greatly advanced the ideal of equality for all, and today
continues to inform our idea of what citizenship is.
• Esping-Andersen: The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism
Comparative perspective to earlier theories of the web for state. Compares western welfare systems
and presents of three part typology of the regimes. He evaluated the level of decommodification
(refers to the extent to which workers are treated as a commodity).
Identified three types of welfare regimes
o Social democratic, highly decommodified, welfare services are subsidized by the state and available
to all citizens (universal benefits) - Scandinavian states.

32
 o Conservative-corporatist, highly decommodified, however not necessarily universal, the amount of
benefit to which an individual is entitled depends on their position in society. Aimed at maintaining
social stability, strong families and loyalty to the state - France, Germany.
o Liberal, highly commodified and sold through the market. Means-tested benefits are available to
the very needy, but become highly stigmatized - US
The UK does not fall cleanly into one of these three types, formerly it was a Social-Democratic model,
however, after the 1970s it became closer to Liberal welfare regime.

-> THE UK WELFARE STATE

• Universality : Welfare is a right to be enjoyed equally by all, ensuring that citizens’ basic welfare
needs are met.
• Means-testing : designed to provide basic, usually short term safety net for people who find
themselves in difficulty and need help to get by.
This distinction is expressed at a policy level in two contrasting approaches to welfare
• Institutional review: its supporters argue that accessed welfare services should be provided as a
right for everyone. They argue that tax levels should be relatively high because the welfare state
needs to be properly funded, it is the responsibility of any civilized state to provide for and protect
its citizens.
• Residualized view supporters argue that welfare should be available only to people who truly need
help and are unable to meet their own needs, they advocate a ‘safety net welfare state’. They see
the welfare state as expensive, ineffective and overly bureaucratic.
This difference has been at the heart of UK debates on welfare reform since the mid-70s.
FOUNDING THE BRITISH WELFARE STATE
It was created in the UK during the 20th century, however, as highlighted by Fraser, there was a very long
historical process behind.
Its roots lay in the Poor Laws of 1601.
After industrialization, in order to maintain social order and reduce the inequalities brought about by
capitalism it was necessary to offer assistance to members of society who found themselves on the
periphery of social life
• 1834 Poor Law Amendment Act with the institution of work houses, which were end up making
people do all they could do a void poverty and stay out of them.
In the late 1800s legislation established the national administration of education and public health.
The welfare state expanded further under the pre-first world war liberal government, introducing pensions
and health and unemployment insurance.
The years following the second world war witnessed further reform expansion of the welfare system.
Shift from selective to universalist vision of the welfare
• Beveridge Report of 1942, can be seen as a blueprint for the modern UK welfare state, targeting
five giants: disease, ignorance, squalor and idleness.
A series of legislative measures under the post war labor government begin to translate this vision into
concrete policy.
Premises on which this new Welfare State was built
• It equated work with paid labor and was grounded in the belief in the possibility of full
employment, these programs were designed around the traditional model of family
responsibilities, patriarchal conception of family (women would stay home).
• It was seen as a source of national solidarity, it was a way of strengthening the connection
between the state and its citizens.
• It was concerned with managing risks that occurred as a natural part of the life course, it was
viewed as a type of social insurance or Social Security.
These principles underpinned the enormous expansion of the welfare state in the three decades after
1945.
However, by the 1970s the political consensus of the welfare state fell apart.
33
By the 1990s, politicians on both the left and the right acknowledged that the welfare state was in need of
significant reform.
REFORMING THE WELFARE STATE: 1979-1997
The political consensus of Social Security provisions broke down in the early 1980s administrations of
Margaret Thatcher in the UK and Ronald Reagan in the US attempted to roll back the welfare state
significantly.
• Mounting financial costs: due to the economic recession in the 70s, growing unemployment, it was
likely that the number of people in need would rise and the state wouldn’t be able to sustain it
• Welfare dependency: highlighted by Murray, the consequences of generous state assistance was
that people become independent on it, resulting into a passive approach to life.
The UK conservative government began to shift responsibility for public welfare away from the state and
towards the private sector.
Did these efforts really succeed in rolling back the welfare state?
Pierson compared the process of welfare retrenchment in the UK in the US and concluded the welfare
states emerged from the conservative era relatively intact, he argued that the obstacles to rolling back
welfare were ultimately more than either government could overcome.
The theory underlying the policies of Thatcher’s government and successive conservative administration
was that cutting tax rates for individuals and corporations would generate higher levels of economic
growth, the fruits of which would then trickle down to the port. Similar policies were adopted in the US.
However, this does not seem to have happened.
Pettinger argues that the proposed benefit for society as a whole maybe far less than the thesis suggests.
Tax cutting policies can help to generate economic development, but this policy may not be the most
effective way of reducing levels of poverty.
REFORMING THE WELFARE STATE: 1997-2010
Welfare reform was a top priority for the labor government which came into office in 1997.
They argued that new policies were needed to deal with poverty and inequality as well as to improve
health and education.
They wanted to tackle the roots of poverty, arguing that it was pursuing a third way, beyond the
residualist-institutionalist divide; they drew on some of the ideas of the sociologist Giddens, which were
aimed at modernizing the politics of the left for a global age.
Labor focused on a type of positive welfare, involving a new welfare contract between the state and the
citizens covering both rights and responsibilities.
• It saw the role of the state as helping people into work and thereby a stable income.
• It also expected the citizens to take responsibility for trying to change their own circumstances.
Employment became a cornerstone of the labor’s social policy.
THE WELFARE IN AN AGE OF AUSTERITY: 2010-
After the 2010 elections, a coalition government was formed by the conservative and a liberal Democrat
parties.
The 2008 financial crisis, the ensuing recession and the perceived need to cut government spending rapidly
gave extra impetus to the coalition’s re-thinking of the welfare state.
Taylor-Gooby argues that the UK welfare state face to double crisis as a result of harsh spending cuts and
restructuring programme which led to the fragmentation of services and increasing private provision
throughout the public sector.
In 2015, the election of a majority conservative government insured that the central thrust of the
coalitions welfare reform continued.
Lister argued that we have entered an ‘age responsibility’ in which the poorest of society are made to feel
and fulfill their obligations as responsible citizens.
However, Hills points out that opinion polls picked up a shift in attitude towards more support for
redistributing income from the better off to the less well off.
Nonetheless, Taylor-Gooby and Stoker argue that the welfare state’s resistance to change is at its weakest.

34
However, the process of leaving the EU and the COVID-19 pandemic made it seem inevitable that there will
be a major debate and rethinking of Social Security provision and welfare reform policies in the decade
ahead.

NEW CHALLENGES FOR OLD WELFARE STATE

Post 1945 welfare states were created at the time of economic reconstruction and industrial development
when men were perceived as breadwinners requiring a family wage.
However, we have since moved away from such conditions, though welfare states have actually proved to
be remarkably resilient to fundamental change.
This is because the the long-standing social problems remain those of the 1940s: poverty, low wages, aging
population, inadequate housing stock; alongside my recent issues such as rising of the gig economy,
precarious forms work etc.
Hemerijck : socioeconomic factors push governments to look for a new welfare state model that is
adequate in a global context, which he sees in five forms:
• Exogenous: intensified international competition
• Endogenous: shift towards service work, feminization of work, aging populations
• Historical: ‘old social risks’ money still directed at unemployment insurance, disability benefits and
relatively generous all day to pensions, making it harder for new problems to be tackled.
• Supranational: of the EU, impact on the ability of national web for states to manage their domestic
demands
• Political: Coming from the well-established decline in party loyalty, anti immigration sentiment,
increasing anti-eu integration
these elements collectively produce a growing pressure for fundamental reform of the welfare state, even
before the global pandemic it’s social, economic and political consequences.

CHAPTER ? – culture
Taking as an example music, it is an industry but also a powerful force in our lives, made and experienced
and shaping our view of the world, while connecting people; music is a kind of culture.

WHAT IS CULTURE
Our intellects allow us with creativity, communication, self-reflection, far more than what we need for mere
survival. Culture refers to everything we male and consume – including ideas, attitudes, beliefs, traditions
and practices – that go beyond mere necessity; symbolic and expressive aspects of social life are worth being
examined by sociologists.

Durkheim thinks about social life via culture, by examining symbols and rituals, material or immaterial
objects that groups affix meaning to and routinized and highly important group activities; symbols, deployed
through rituals, give community a specific character.

• MATERIAL VS SYMBOLIC CULTURE

We can distinguish material culture as the physical goods, often placed in an economic system, and
symbolic culture as the set of beliefs, values and language; a piece of clothing is not just the material
part, but also what it communicates symbolically.

Durkheim explains how symbolic culture shapes social life; he described how collective
representations, so a set of images and words, can represent a particular culture, with the purpose
of creating social cohesion and order. He focused mainly on religion, by separating symbols into the
categories of sacred and prophane, constructing social boundaries between those who recognize a
set of collective representations as worthy of reverence and those who don’t.

35
 Another case is the athleisure, a growing market trend that combines casual style of sweatpants with
a more fitted look; symbolically, we are dealing with a “casualization” of fashion, but on the material
aspects these yoga pants and leggings are cutting into the jeans market. Sometimes controversies
highlight cultural change (e.g. in the past men wore leggings) and unpacking relationship between
symbolic and material aspects can also provide explanations about how groups cohere.

• HIGH VS POPULAR CULTURE

High culture refers to cultural goods made for and enjoyed by elite groups (e.g. ballet, fancy cuisine,
oil paintings, …); the Industrial Revolution allowed us to reproduce cultural goods for the broader
society, creating the popular culture, with heavily commercialized goods made for and consumed by
large audiences (also called mass or low culture). High culture is often associated with the aura or
prestige and exclusivity, while popular one is associated with mundanity and pleasure.

Different social groups often dismiss the respective opposite kind of culture, but sociologists in
general believe any kind of culture is actually important; moreover, today the distinction between
high and popular culture is blurring, while technology and media challenge our common conception
of arts and culture (e.g. is a stamp like those of Andy Warhol art? Is a digital installation art?). The
pandemic too is forcing affecting our relationship with culture, with an increase in digitalization also
for the museums (e.g. Open Access Project): this has positive outcomes in terms of the possibility of
displaying much more than the common permanent masterpieces, but on the other hand according
to Benjamin is also diminishing the aura of high culture; a successful bridging of high and popular is
considered lemonade by Beyonce in 2016.

• CULTURE AS VALUES VS CULTURE AS A WAY OF LIFE

From Weber to Parsons, social scientists learned to approach culture as a unified system of values
(moral beliefs) and norms (rules and expectations by which a group guides the behavior of its
members); culture bends our beliefs into actions.

In Lewis study about the culture of poverty, he found out that poverty creates a set of widespread
values and norms, what would be called as a “tangle of pathologies” resulted from the combination
of slavery, marginalization and racism; this culture results from poverty/inequality, and people
should not be blamed as if it was their choice and their preference à their culture. Even among
homeless, it had been proven that values and beliefs are identical and also stubborn.

It might appear that culture is external to us, that we are fully socialized into a culture’s ideas, values,
language and patterns of interaction; yet, people also adopt and adapt culture from moment to
moment so that our collective norms, ideas and values are not stable as they might appear. Anderson
analyzed decent and street kids and found out the use of norms suited to particular situations in what
he called code switching: adopting a ser of informal rules and manners that are appropriate to a
specific setting.
Swidler offered an alternative explanation of how we practice culture in everyday life; culture was
seen as a cultural toolkit, as a set of beliefs, values and attitudes that we learn to use in different
situations, it is a strategic activity in which we decide what is best to use in each situation.

Culture is constantly remade and repurposed: those with a wider cultural repertoire are equipped
to handle more situations and those who have a cultural tool well matched for a particular situation
are more successful. Culture is both a set of values and practices, in what becomes a sort of paradox:
culture exists outside as individuals, shaping our understanding of the worlds, and yet it is constantly
remade and repurposed in everyday interactions

CULTURE IS A CYCLE
36
Our image of the artist is someone solitary and deep in thought; nevertheless, artists are always part of a
vast network of groups and institutions that shape every cultural objects and influence them; Bordieu was,
in fact, more interested in who created the artist rather than what the artist created. Artists are part of a
wider cultural cycle of production, consumption and remaking of culture:

1) PRODUCTION: cultural products are the result of a wide social system, not of the single artist;
rock music, for example, is not due to an individual’s genius, but to the technologic
advancements, new market demands and music label business decisions. The mass
production of cultural goods requires a vast system of people and organization called culture
industries: macro level arrangements in the culture industries shape innovations and
standardize cultural production, making the culture what we actually see and hear. For
example, country music became increasingly homogeneous as the result of the creation of
larger labels from the merging of smaller ones (corporate consolidation).

Culture production involves people that reflect social inequalities both of ethnicity and
gender (even mixed à intersectionality), even if technology allowed a greater access to
cultural production. There is also a further interesting point in the pivotal role of interns in
the cultural production industry: they limit employment opportunities in the culture
industries, reproduce inequalities (class ceiling), have a complex relationship with higher
education; nevertheless, new jobs also emerge from culture industries too (e.g. teenager
working part-time in fast foods)

2) CONSUMPTION: Veblen in 1899 became one of the main theorists of cultural consumption:
he noticed that from the late 1800s open displays of wealth were considered vulgar and
delays in gratifications/putting off pleasure were valued abilities; nowadays, instead, excess
wealth became something to display with the so-called conspicuous consumption, gaining
prestige by the very same showing off of cultural goods. Studies have shown how today elites
are more likely to spend for participating in services and activities rather than in displaying
luxury goods.

Consumption is not just a passive activity, like you can find out in book clubs for romantic
novels, because we bend meanings and uses of cultural goods to our own purposes (the
meaning of a cultural good is open to different interpretations)

3) REMAKING OF CULTURE – SUBCULTURE

A subculture is a group that holds values and engages in activities that separate members
from the wider society; this gives us a sense of how people repurpose and remake culture.
Subcultures are differentiated by their expression of style (clothing, slang, dress, …), take and
adapt existing cultural items and behaviors to reuse them. It is not just about style, but also
about a way of life and freedom of behavior.

Some subcultures are also based upon reusing and sharing cultural worlds, actively changing
and using fictional existing characters and settings to write their own stories à fanfiction.
Moreover, subculture can also be repackaged into consumerist culture as a cycle: for
example, Fifty Shades of Gray began as a fanfiction of Twilight and was repackaged into the
successful novel. It is a broad, intertwined, cultural circuit

HOW CULTURE WORKS

Recalling the code switching, sociologists argue that there is not asset of beliefs and practices that is better
than another; nevertheless, cultural differences can create inequality and can prevent or affect social
mobility.
37
Bordieu proposed three interlinked concepts to show how culture makes differences and reproduces social
hierarchies:
a) People acquire and trade particular cultural, symbolic and material, goods, that are defined as
cultural capital, typically non-economic resources (skills, knowledge, behaviors) useful in a particular
social sphere; it can be:
o an institutional cultural capital (like a degree)
o an embodied cultural capital (your manner, style, acting)
o an objectified cultural capital (clothes and material objects)

for example, a high school student that joins the chess club or the model UN club can acquire some
cultural capital that prestigious university may see positively for admission, while not all schools and
all kids have the resources to activate and participate in such extra-curricular activities.

b) Certain cultural capital can be valuable somewhere, under the correct circumstances or social
spheres that Bordieu refers to as fields: contexts where a kind of cultural capital is exchanged, like a
profession, a community, a class of people; it is like a sport: there are the rules of the game, the
better the player knows these rules and how they work in the field the better chances he has of
succeeding.

c) Using the right knowledge in the right way, our learned dispositions, the set of tendencies organizing
how we see the world and act within it is the habitus; it is a king of second nature that is only apparent
when something goes wrong or we travel somewhere with different norms

With these notions, it is evident that schooling creates inequalities: education is the field, with its rules of
the game, and the system rewards a particular kind of cultural capital, the one of the dominant upper-middle
class culture:
success in education > greater employment opportunities > better economic outcomes > reproduction of
the same class structure

Durkheim and Weber influenced Bordieu:

- Durkheim because of the division religion makes of sacred and prophane à social origins of how we
classify the world
- Weber because of the distinction between:
I. Class = groups who share a similar position based on income, wealth, education and
occupation
II. Status = the social designation of honor

For him, there are classes and also status groups, collections of people who share similar
characteristics that a community has given a certain level of prestige, a greater or lesser value when
compared to other groups.

Through culture we organize ourselves; there are not only social boundaries (inequalities to access
resources), but also symbolic boundaries, the ways people separate each other into groups (through
tradition, styles, tastes); boundaries create a feeling of group membership.
So, if on one hand culture shapes and binds groups, bridges, creating communities that in return influence
our tastes and introduce new ideas, fashions, cultural items through social interaction, on the other it also
creates fences, pulling us apart (e.g. sport); symbolic boundaries of the “us vs them” shape everything from
sports to politics: creating and maintaining these distinctions and limiting membership and access to
resources is called boundary work (it creates groups and solidifies group cohesion).

38
Not only cultural tastes changed, but also the way we think about taste itself: in the past, people used their
knowledge to make claims of high status (knowledge on a particular cultural genre), while nowadays the
trend changed and we speak about cultural omnivores: it is a mistake to consider it a democratization of
taste or an elimination of symbolic boundaries, rather it is just another way of claiming status

THE CULTURE JAM

Different ways of using the term:
1) Culture jam as a mix: culture moves, spreads beliefs and practices across group; different ways of
diffusion occur (wars, conflicts, trade, migrations) and as culture crosses boundaries it changes and
adapts. Culture is always a combination in which the parts can harmonize or conflict with each other,
but their investigation can illuminate us about social life. Today’s exchange of culture across the
world is at another magnitude and international scale, integrating economic and political system, at
a point that It gets called globalization; globalizing corporations not necessarily impose themselves,
they often “localize” (e.g. Starbucks reserve)

2) Culture jam as a problem: the studies often carried out by Ritzer derive from those by Weber; the
latter dealt with the increasing secularization, rationalization, efficiency, predictability, control that
was going on. Ritzer calls this matter in the modern society as McDonaldization, the mass production
of culture, resulting in similar cultural goods being found everywhere. Some slight efforts to adapt to
local cultures are not enough, and the trend tends to drive out of local patterns, ideas, beliefs and
traditions. Typically, those companies are Western or Americans (only recently Chinese and Indians)
in what starts being called cultural imperialism. On its flip side there is the cultural appropriation, in
which members of a dominant culture adopt the cultural goods (ideas, symbols, skills, expression,
intellectual property, food) of other groups to make profit (e.g. the burrito case); this disconnects the
product from the history and community from which it emerged, and reduces the chances that those
groups can benefit from the culture they produce. But can ultimately an ethic group own culture? Or
is it already a mix of even precedent cultures?

3) Culture jam as a solution: people that participate in the culture industries are not completely
unaware of the larger problems in culture (e.g. rappers). Klein explains that culture jamming is the
practice of raising consciousness around issues like McDonaldization, corporate consolidation,
cultural imperialism through informal and often illegal guerrilla (independent and unauthorized)
marketing campaigns; it is a form of political communication through alternative/subversive media
activities often using existing media to subvert a marketing strategy (e.g. graffiti).

A sociological approach to culture can illuminate power, inequality, and cycle of culture by tying
together the ends of the production and consumption process; we call the international production,
distribution, and marketing system of corporation, laborers, and consumers the global commodity
chain. This system is largely hidden column few people have any idea where their products come
from living most consumers unconcerned by the gross inequalities between them and the laborers
on the other side of the system (e.g. Mardi Gras beads in New Orleans)

CHAPTER 18 – religion
WHAT IS RELIGION
Taking as a starting point the non-religious Sunday Assemblies, it arises the question of what religion could
actually be. Sociology of religion places special demands on our sociological imagination as we look to
understand the diversity of beliefs and rituals of human societies; certain ideals inspire profound conviction
in believers that are respectable, even if the sociologist must be relatively detached from them (he may have
personal convictions though). We seek to explain how religion is organized, what are the principles, beliefs
and values, how the organization is related to the larger society and the success and failures in recruiting
members; some religions like Christianity and Judaism need formal organizations and buildings, while other
39
need to just inform our settings and they are not connected to the bureaucratic organization. Sociologists
have often seen religion as an important source of social solidarity, with their rituals that help creating a
moral community in which all the members know how to behave towards one another; nevertheless, it is
also possible source of destructive social conflicts as history testifies.

Religions are commonly defined by a belief in God/s and perhaps an afterlife, but they also involve worship
in religious buildings (synagogues, churches, temples, …) and doing “religious things” such as praying and
eating or not eating certain foods. Having a common unique definition of religion is, according to many,
impossible, also as the result of the numerous theoretical perspectives that sociology contains that differ in
how they construe the nature of social reality; considering:
- Macro-level studies they see religion as a fundamental social institution that exists objectively and
has real effects on individuals (transmits moral code, norms of behavior, values, …)
- Micro-level studies are rooted on a more social constructionist perspective that focus more on the
ways what constitutes religion is continually reproduced and changed in everyday interactions.

We have three kinds of definitions of religion:

1) INCLUSIVE DEFINITIONS: they are functionalist theories that see religion as something fundamental
for the human life and society as such; it can be defined as the system of beliefs and practices with
which people deal with the struggles of life, try to answer questions of existence, find social solidarity.

The main problem is that these definitions often include too much and imply that everybody is
implicitly religious (he/she may not acknowledge it); this involves also some political ideologies like
communism or football team affiliation: they involve systems of beliefs and practices that help people
find meaning in the world.

2) EXCLUSIVE DEFINITIONS: these theories aim at defining religions by reference to the substance of
their varied beliefs; it is something rooted in the idea that all religions make a distinction between
what is the empirical reality and what is the transcended reality. This approach allows to remove all
those institutions that result from the secularization but at the same time is ill-equipped to face new
religious movements

3) DEFINITION IN USE (the most widespread): it is something that today we also call social
constructionism: rather than assuming that there is a real phenomenon called religion, we should
investigate more those situations in which people make reference to religion; it is an approach that
is concerned with how the meaning of religion changed, how people use the concept for their own
purposes, whether the use is increasing or not. A problem associated with the definition in use is that
there is the acceptance of all those things considered religious by people themselves that legitimate
them as religious.

THE OPINION OF THE FOUNDING FATHERS

As a general background, they all thought religion was to be on the decline and that science was about to
rise
Þ DURKHEIM
Studied religion with a focus on the relationship between religion and other social institutions, as
later expanded by other structural functionalists like Parsons (role of religion in his AGIL paradigm).
Moreover, he stressed the importance of the ritual and of the regular assembly in particular for the
major transitions of life

Þ MARX
Marx accepts Feuerbach’s vision in “The essence of Christianity”: religion consists of ideas and values
produced by human beings in the course of their cultural development, which they mistakenly
40
 project onto divine forces or gods; because human beings do not fully understand their own history,
they tend to attribute long established socially constructed values and norms to the activities of
supernatural beings or spirits. The 10 commandments, for example, are a mythical version of the
origin of moral precepts which govern the lives of Jewish and Christian believers. Without
acknowledging this point, we are doomed to maintain the situation of alienation we are living in,
with the result that human values and ideas become transferred on something else; Marx accepted
the idea that religion represents human self-alienation and he defines it also as “the opium of the
people”: religions defers happiness and rewards to the afterlife, diverting away the attention from
inequalities and injustice by the promise of what is to come. Religions have a strong ideological
element because they often provide justifications for inequalities of wealth and power. This doesn't
mean that the positive values embodied in religion cannot become guiding ideals for the future of
humanity on earth, since not necessarily they are wrong. Some have ultimately associated the
ideological element that religion implied to colonialism, underlining how it may have been one of
the factors reinforcing the destruction of traditional cultures and even helped out slavery

Þ WEBER
He started a project of studying the major religions of the world (world religions, that attract large
numbers of believers and affect the course of history). In particular, he focused on the connection
between religion and social change, since religion was nor something necessarily conservative but
also revolutionary in force; moreover, he was also able to reconnect this sense of social change to
the birth of capitalism in the West: eastern religions proved barriers for the birth of capitalism not
because they are backward but because they developed different kind of values. In China and India,
for example, Hinduism and Confucianism seek to escape from the material world, that is a sort of veil
hiding the true concerns mankind should have. On the contrary, Christianity is a religion of salvation,
something way more dynamic, refusing the passivity and facing a constant fight that is the real
revolutionary aspect of religion. As regards the unsettling role of religion in terms of social change, it
could be useful to remember the abolishment of slavery and the fall of communism in Poland.

A SECULAR AGE
Secularization refers to the social process through which religion gradually loses its influence over all of the
various spheres of social life; Davie suggests that, where a small, active minority performs religious activities
on behalf and with the tacit approval of the non-active majority, this is better expressed as a vicarious
religion (typical of the Nordic countries, with high levels of church memberships but low levels of
attendance). This, though, does not give any insight into how those who are not involved in organized
religions, that are not for or against it, actually perceive religion.

How should we measure secularization? This is furtherly complicated by the fact we do not have a unique
definition of religion as well; three are the most important models:
a) LEVEL OF MEMBERSHIP: official records and statistics can show how many people belong to a church
or other religious body and are active in attending services and other ceremonies; most industrialized
countries have experienced considerable secularization according to this index, including dominantly
Catholic countries like France and Italy.
b) SOCIAL INFLUENCE, WEALTH AND PRESTIGE: a second dimension concerns how far churches and
other religious organization maintain their influence over government in politics; church leaders can
no longer assume their views will be influential with powerful political groups. While some
established churches remain very wealthy and religious movements may rapidly build up fortunes,
the circumstances of many longstanding religious recommendations are quite insecure
c) DIMENTION OF RELIGIOSITY: it concerns beliefs and values; many people with religious beliefs do not
regularly attend services or take part in public ceremonies, while regular attendance and
participation do not always imply holding strong religious views.

41
As socio-economic development generates increasingly higher living standards, religiosity tends to decline,
and, conversely, religious belief remains stronger in circumstances of the privation and hardship; some of
the most religious countries are also some of the poorest, while atheism is most widespread in developed
economies. The meaning of atheism is not universal nor clear (e.g. how Buddhism should be interpreted).

As regards the historic development of religiosity, some may argue that in the past religiosity was far more
important in people's daily life than it is today, while others may point out the weak commitment European
medieval people had; nevertheless, a complete transition to a wholly secular age may involve a period of
decline of traditional religions in which people may still have a sense that there's something out there, but
this is still uncertain, as many think people need the existence of something beyond material reality.
Nowadays we have large majorities of the population that are between two poles, they identify in what is
called betwixt and between, believing in a higher power, and exhibiting a fuzzy fidelity to religious beliefs
and tradition.

There are also many criticisms to this secularization of Europe, that suggests that sociology tends to elide
the analytical concept of secularization with a predictive version that sees the process as globally inevitable;
there are two interpretations that suggest that sociology has focused too heavily on the formal, institutional
aspects of established religion and ignored the spirituality as it is practiced and experienced in everyday life:
- The rise of tribe
Against the theory of individualization supported by Giddens and Beck, modern societies are
characterized by the rapid growth of small groupings of people who voluntarily band together on the
basis of shared musical tastes, ideas, consumer preferences, leisure pursuits, and so on; they are
called neo tribes: like traditional tribal groups, they have a shared identity, but unlike them, they do
not last long and people's commitment to them tends to be quite weak and short lived (they are fluid
and fragile social and entities). What is common is a very strong need and quest for close social
contact and interaction, that he is, in Durkheim’s terms, something religious à if we know where to
look, new forms of religious expression are emerging

- Everyday lived religion

Individuals constantly try to make sense of their place in the world and, considering individual
religious practices, sociologists have tended to view apparently contradictory internal diversity as
illustrative of the problems brought by excessive individualism in society. Today we face the
appearance of extraordinarily diverse and private forms of religion resulting from the social process
of individualization, in which personal faith is not of the coherent, church-oriented kind you might
expect, it's just a little voice, something privatized that does not contribute to social solidarity nor
can find support in a unified public realm; from the outside, an individual's choice may appear to lack
internal logic and religious coherence, but to the person concerned each element of their DIY
construction or bricolage fits together quite logically into a personally meaningful whole. There is the
need to attend to the complexities of such everyday lived religion if we are to grasp the changing
relationship between religion, society and individual.

So, individuals and groups still practice religion, but in ways that have remained largely invisible to the
predominantly quantitative research methods in sociological surveys; the position of religion in the global
north is much more complex than the secularization thesis originally suggested, with religious and spiritual
beliefs that still remain powerful and motivating forces in many people’s lives, even if the latter does not
choose to worship formally through the framework of traditional church organizations. Moreover, we face
a growing role of non-western faiths and religious movements; eventually, there is much less evidence of
secularization outside the global north. In general, the instability and diversity brought by globalization, with
hard times of rapid change, brought many people to look for an answer in religion.

RELIGION ORGANIZATIONS AND MOVEMENTS

42
When considering religions, we often do so with the concepts and theories that grew out of the analysis of
the European experience; early theorists such as Weber describe the religious organizations as falling along
a spectrum based on the degree to which they are established and conventional (e.g. churches lie at one end
because they are conventional and established, while cults lie at the other because they are not conventional
nor established). We have to analyze the terminology:

n Church: the term was first analyzed by Max Weber thanks to his ideal types; a church is a large, well
established religious body - such as the Church of England or the Catholic Church. churches have a
formal, bureaucratic structure with a hierarchy of religious officials that to represent the conservative
face of religion, since they are integrated into the existing institutional order

n Sect: it is a smaller (compared to the church), less well-organized group of committed believers,
usually created in protests against what our church has become - as the case of the Calvinists. Sects
are comparatively small, they usually aim at discovering and following “the true way” and tend to
withdraw from the surrounding society into their own form of community life; traditional churches
are normally regarded as corrupt, while these groups do not have officials and all members are
regarded as equal participants, mostly coming from an active join and not born as members.

n Denomination: it is a sect which has cooled down to become an institutionalized body rather than
an active protest group (e.g. Calvinists was a sect during its early formation), that over the years
became more respectable. Denominations are recognized as more or less legitimate by churches and
quite often cooperate with them

n Cult: it resembles a sect but has a different emphasis, because it is more loosely knit and transient,
composed by individuals who reject what they see as the main values of our wider society; the focus
is the individual experience, so like-minded individuals are brought together not by joining the
organization formally, but by following particular theories and prescribed way of behaving
(individuals are also allowed to maintain original religious connections). A cult often originates
around an inspirational charismatic leader.

n Religious movements: are associations of people who join together to spread a new religion or to
promote a new interpretation of an existing religion, so they are special form of social movement;
they are larger than sects and have a less exclusive membership, but movements are difficult to
distinguish from cults or sects. his movements have certain phases:

I. the movement derives its life and cohesion from a powerful charismatic leader that is
perceived to have inspirational qualities capable of capturing the imagination and
devotion of followers, usually critical of the religious establishment and seeking to
proclaim a new message. In this early stage the movement is fluid and has not and
established system of authority come on since members are in direct contact with the
leader
II. there is the routinization of charisma: the leader dies and rarely it is substituted by a new
one, so, while the former one was still alive, rules and procedures were formalized and
can develop independently.

n New religious movements: the term is used to refer to the broad range of religious and spiritual
groups, cults and sects that have emerged alongside the larger mainstream religions; many derived
from the major traditions of Hinduism, Christianity and Buddhism, while others have emerged from
traditions virtually unknown in the West. members, especially those are the global north, tend to be
well educated and from middle class backgrounds. We have three categories:

43
 1) World-affirming movements: they can be compared to self-help or therapy groups that lack
rituals, churches and formal theologies, while focusing on the spiritual well-being; They do
not reject the outside world or its values, rather they seek to enhance their ability to perform
and succeed in that word by unlocking human potential. Many of the new age movements
belong to this category, as a result of the unparalleled degree of autonomy and freedom that
individuals in the global north nowadays live

2) World-rejecting movements: they are critical of the outside world and often demand
significant lifestyle changes from their followers, that have to leave ascetically, change their
dress and hairstyles, follow a certain diet; these movements are frequently exclusive

3) World-accommodating movements: they emphasize the importance of the inner religious life
above worldly concerns, seeking to reclaim the spiritual purity lost in traditional religious
settings while carrying on their everyday lives and careers without that visible change

CONTEMPORARY RELIGION: TRENDS AND CHALLENGES

Religion, religious beliefs and practices today are increasingly diverse.
An initial matter for debate is the gender inequality widespread in the church; Stanton is an important
activist famous for criticisms against the masculinity of the Bible, resulting from the fact that is was written
by men and not because of the word of God. Within the hierarchies of CoE (Church of England) things are
changing, since women have become increasingly important in numbers and roles, while the Catholic Church
is still anchored in malestream traditions.

Another important matter is the gender withing the members of the church: while the Catholic Church still
refers to homosexuality as a perverse inclination, barring people from taking the vows, a huge debate
widened within the CoE, definitely more open. The church preaches love and fails to adapt the ways in which
people actually live and love in contemporary societies, so that there had been increasing pressure on
churches to change; more equality, acceptance of same-sex relations and rights are the key features of
modernity, to which the church has to adapt. Some churches adapt and change to accommodate the
emerging reality , while others stand in direct opposition to change and reaffirm their traditional positions.

The United States have for much time represented an important exception to the view that secularization
was on the roll: even if it is one of the most modernized nations, it is characterized by some of the highest
levels of religious beliefs and membership in the world, that's something unusual; some surveys showed that
around 40% of Americans will have been to church in the previous week, and 86% of Americans said that
they believe in God or a higher power (believing without belonging). Yet, there is also evidence that things
may be changing, as teenagers of 2010 we're less likely to be committed to a faith and more liberal in their
attitudes towards homosexuality and even the Darwin’s theory.
Some argue that high levels of religions in the US can be understood in terms of cultural transition: in this
realization came relatively late here and religion was an important factor stabilizing people identities,
allowing the smoother cultural transition into the emerging melting pot; this is something that justifies the
fact that the younger generations may dilute the longstanding American exceptionalism.
Even the composition of the Protestant church in America changed since the 90s, with an increase in the
membership of conservative, non-traditional churches such as the Baptists, that emphasize a literal
interpretation of the Bible, with morality and conversion through evangelizing à the belief in spiritual
rebirth or being born again, as a response to growing secularism

The best evidence that we have not yet entered a secular age lies in the growth of religious fundamentalism,
the adherence to a basic set of principles or beliefs with approaches that call for the literal interpretation of
basic scriptures or texts and idea that doctrines which emerge should be applied to all aspects of social,
economic and political life; according to religious fundamentalists, there is only one true view of the world
44
and no room for ambiguity or multiple interpretations, with the access to the exact meaning of scriptures
that is restricted to a privileged bunch of interpreters that are usually religious leaders, enriched with the
authority in religious and secular matters.
- Christian fundamentalism: particularly in the US with the commitment to spread the message;
adopted by the conservative wing of the Republican party; importance of the counter-elite, privately
educated in contexts that work within the framework of the bible’s infallibility.
- Islamic fundamentalism: from the late 19th because of the failure in containing the expansion of
western culture; origins in the backdrop of the Iranian Revolution and the overthrow of the Shah.
PAGE 759-760-761

CHAPTER 7 – gender and sexuality

INTRODUCTION
Today we hear about many more terms and definitions regarding gender that it is best to clarify. We refer
to as a non-binary person as somebody who is neither exclusively male nor exclusively female, neither
masculine nor feminine (they/them as pronouns); this is typically because the male/female identification
does not capture what a person feels. This highlights a massive social change to which sociology is not always
up to date. In addition, a person can also feel a gender-dysphoria, a term used by some to describe the
disjunction between the self-identity (for example as a woman) and the physical body (for example as a
man). The term transgender covers a variety an increasing number of people today who experience gender
variance, including those whose gender identity and or performance of gender diverges from that assigned
at birth or is expected according to dominant social norms of femininity and masculinity; cisgender is a term
used to describe people with assigned gender at birth does coincide with their self-identity and gender
performance. All the surveys suggest increasing numbers of people that feel gender fluidity and anticipates
significant challenges for every social institution, from health services to education systems at schools,
workplaces and public spaces.

What, if any, is the relationship between biology and gender identity? How is sexuality connected to human
biology and self-identity some fundamental aspects of our personal identities may not be as fixed or secure
as many previously thought; Instead, gender and sexual identities are fluid, shifting and unstable. The social
constructionism of sociological approaches today's contrasting with commonly held biological ideas, even if
this is particularly true for western societies. Since the development of feminist theories and ideas in the
social movement of the 60s and the 70s, sociology has opened with a basic contrast between sex and gender:
- sex can mean sexual activity, as in to have sex with someone, but it can also refer to physical
characteristics, such as the female uterus and the genitalia, that distinguish the female sex from the
male sex
- gender concerns social, cultural and psychological differences between men and women that are
shaped within the social process and involve relations of power; it is linked to socially constructed
norms of masculinity and femininity and is not a direct product of biology. Some people feel they
have born into the wrong physical body and may seek to put things right by transforming it.

Especially in industrialized countries, important aspects of people sexual lives have also changed in
fundamental ways since the 60s: the previously dominated view that sexuality was tide to biological
reproduction is undermined by the recognition that, in practice, there is no necessary link between sexuality
and reproduction. We also face changes of the widespread assumption of heteronormativity - the believe
that heterosexuality is normal and right, while other sexualities are deviant (nowadays in western societies
they are way more accepted); there had been scientific studies that surfaced over the time trying to explain
scientific differences between male and female brains in order to explain behavioral patterns from a
biological basis, but Connell in 1987 already argued that there is no evidence of the mechanism which would
link biological forces to the complex social behavior exhibited by human beings across the world. this social
constructionist approach is now the dominant one.

45
GENDER
Conversely to the previous studies that considered male behaviors as ungendered norms from which women
deviated, a new approach to gender differences is gender socialization, that is, the learning of gender roles
via social agencies such as the family, state and mass media; this approach distinguishes biological sex from
social cultural gender, an infant is born with the first but developed the second through contact with various
agencies of socialization that make children internalize the social norms and expectations that, according to
dominant ideas, correspond to their biological sex. Hence, gender differences are not biologically
determined but culturally produced as men and women are socialized into different roles, we learn different
sex roles and different masculine/feminine norms. Gender stereotyping is everywhere, even in this social
media. Social influences and gender identity flow through many diverse channels and tend to be largely
indirect and unnoticed, and even parents committed to raising their children in non-sexist ways find existing
patterns of gender learning difficult to combat (toys, TV, books, school); there are plenty of research is
demonstrating how cultural media products aimed at young audiences embody stereotypical gender
representations of girls and boys and their expecting ambitions. For example, there are often two contrasting
representations of women: the traditional parent in a committed relationship or the attractive, alluring
woman with unrealistic body shape; this, especially on young brains, tends to spread dissatisfaction,
especially among girls, with their own bodies as a continuous comparison with a perfect and unrealistic
example (not to mention the modern technologies such as Photoshop that even more idealized).

Socialization, as is getting blatant, it's not as smooth process; socializing agencies offer opportunities for
people to take part in gendered practices, but this does not mean that gender identity is determined;
children do resist socialization pressures, some boys mix masculine and feminine elements, and may behave
differently in private and in public, so they are not passive unquestioning recipients of gender programming
but are actively engaged with the process, modifying rejecting pre-scripted gender roles however powerful
they may appear. Social constructionism definitely rejects any biological basis for gender differences, as
generate entities emerge in relation to perceived sex differences in society and in turn help to shape those
differences. For example, society in which ideas of masculinity are characterized by physical strength will
encourage men to cultivate specific body image that are different from those societies with different
masculine norms. Gender identities and sex differences are inextricably linked within individual lived
bodies, but the latter is subject to individual choices and social forces which shape and alter it: people give
their bodies meanings which challenge what is thought of as normal, choosing to construct and reconstruct
them, even using surgery, to facilitate the performance of their gender identity (NB these apparently free
individual choices are still linked to wider social norms of the ideal body size and shape).

Gender is a significant form of social stratification as well as a key factor in structuring the opportunities
and life chances of people in all spheres of social life; The prevailing division of Labor between the taxes as
lead to men and women assuming unequal positions in terms of power, prestige and wealth. Gender
inequality is the fundamental topic of central concern today.

Connell (1987) attempted to link patriarchy, the socially organized dominance of men over women, and
masculinity into a theory of gender relations. Empirical evidence highlights how women are kept in
subordinate positions to men in gender relations that are the product of everyday interactions and practices,
even if the actions and behavior of people in their personal lives are directly linked to collective
arrangements in society that are continuously reproduced over lifetimes and generations (even if we know
that they can slowly change). there there are three aspects which interact to form a society's gender order:
1) power, operating through social relations such as its auriti, violence and ideology and
institutions, the state, the military and domestic life
2) labor, referring to the sexual division of Labor both within the home and in the labor market

46
 3) cathexis, the dynamics within intimate, emotional and personal relationships, including
marriage, sexuality and child rearing

Gender relations are structured in a societal level in particular gender order that is referred as gender regime
(thus, finally, a neighborhood and a state all have their own gender regimes). His idea of the gender hierarchy
is at PAGE 267. If sex and gender are socially constructed, then it must be possible for people to change their
gender orientation: it does not necessarily mean that people can easily switch, but at least they can adjust
(e.g. and emphasized femininity may develop a feminist consciousness and change the density and behavior
of a person); Connell Suggests that there are powerful tendencies towards a gender crisis:
A) institutions that have traditionally supported Mens power are gradually being undermined and the
legitimacy of men's domination of women is weekend through legislation on divorce, domestic
violence, rape, economic questions such as taxations and pension
B) the demonic heterosexuality is less dominant than it once was
C) there are new foundations for social interest that contradict the existing gender order such as
married women rights, LGBTQ+ movements and the growth of anti-sexist attitude

These threats are not necessarily negative men, they can push towards the idea of a new man who self-
consciously rejects older forms of behavior associated with the hegemonic masculinity; as a matter of fact if
from the 70s we have many empirical studies of inequalities between men and women, but little effort was
expended trying to understand the formation of male identities. Since the late 80s this fundamentally
changed and questions about what it means to be a 21st century man and what norms are losing their grips
on younger generations are asked. The new gender relations, the pattern of interactions between men and
women, is interested in understanding how male identities are constructed and what impact socially
prescribed roles have on men's behavior; Connell also investigate globalization on the gender order, because
gender itself is getting globalized: in the new array as of gender relations like transnational and multinational
corporations, non-governmental organization, international media, global markets capitals, commodities,
services and labor are masculine in nature and mainly run by men.

SEXUALITY
Sexuality is considered by many people to be a private and highly personal matter.

à Barash in 1979 argued that there is an evolutionary explanation for the widely reported sexual
promiscuity of men: they produce millions of sperm and they are biologically disposed to impregnate as
many women as possible; Women, On the contrary, produce only a few hundred eggs over a lifetime and
have to carry the fetus for nine months, which explains why they are not sexually promiscuous. Many
scholars are dismissive of this kind of approach.

à Rose illustrates that human behavior is shaped more by the environment than genetics.

à Elias in 1987 argues that the human capacity to learn is an evolutionary development, but in humans the
balance between learned and unlearned behavior has titled decisively in favor of the former; as a
consequence, humans not only can learn more than other species, they must learn more in order to
participate successfully in increasingly diverse and complex societies. biological evolution is overlain with
social development and all the attempts to explain societies using biology are reductionist and inadequate.

à Murdock created something that supports the theory of the natural differences in the fact that, according
to more than 200 societies, there is evidence of a division of labor between women and men performing
tasks for which they are best suited; It was the best logical basis for the organization of society

à Parsons argues that the family operates the most efficiently with a clear cut sexual division of Labor in
which females act in expressive roles and men are instrumental roles (breadwinners); this complementary
47
division springs from a biological distinction between the sexes. Of course, feminists sharply criticized such
claims, arguing that expressive female is a social role promoted largely for the convenience of men in an
essentialist approach. this is very same approach is the one that tried to explain, by studying male, straight
men and gay men brains, the biological foundation of homosexuality; how is it possible, especially after the
experience of Humphreys, to know that the straight brains were from straight men?

The assumption that there are two biological sexes which form the basis for understanding gender
differences in sexuality is false also on the historical perspective: before the mid 18th century, western
cultures helped a presumption that there was only one sex which varied along a behavioral continuum from
femininity to masculinity; some people also show an intersex condition, but which of these “variations”
counts is socially constructed. In the global north, sexuality is linked to individual identity, and the prevailing
idea is that homosexuals or heterosexuals are people with sexual orientation lies within themselves and it's
primarily a personal matter; same-sex relationships are not universally legal even today and in general still
face prejudice and discrimination. McIntosh in 1968 is among the first to argue that homosexuality was not
a medical condition but a social role, and that the polarization between the two sexual orientations was not
that sharp. According to Focault, the homosexual identity seems to have barely existed before the 18th
century and the word was coined only in 1860s; then, homosexuality became part of a medicalized
discourse, dealt with in clinical terms as a psychiatric disorder or perversion.

As regards to sexual practices, early studies of the 1940s and 50s started considering this topic, commonly
viewed as beyond the bounds of sociological interest and ignored; Kinsey found a wide divergent between
public understanding, social norms and actual sexual practices. This study was interested in finding out
whether public norms of sexuality really governed the actual sexual behaviors and if deviant practices were
limited just to a tiny minority; the research was conducted on a sample of white population in America of
18,000 people. The findings revealed the large difference between public expectations and sexual conduct
in terms of prostitution, premarital sexual experience, masturbation, virginity, oral sexual activity; for sure,
the gap between the accepted attitudes and the actual behavior demonstrated a sexual liberalization that
started in the 20s even if we were still dealing with a taboo subject. The research was deeply controversial
and attacked from conservative political forces and religious organization but for sure it gave a huge
inheritance. Today we coexist between all the norms relating to sex that are still influential and new liberal
perspectives. According to many, diversity of surveys of sexual behavior is controversial: stressing the case
of Tanzania, they argue that in societies where there is still the stigma on that topic the results were
unreliable, even if they involve that triangulation of methods.

The influence of religion in the attitudes towards sexual behavior is undeniable; for nearly 2000 years then
in western societies there is the influence of Christianity and all the different sects and denominations that
diverged from it. For sure, the dominant view is being that sexual behavior should be controlled. In Victorian
times there was a widespread sexual hypocrisy in which women were believed to be in different sexuality
and accepting attentions of their husbands only as a duty, creating a double standard between the public
and private. In a 19th century, religious assumes were partly replaced by medical ones: some argued that
any type of sexual activity unconnected with reproduction would cause serious physical harm, masturbation
led to blindness, oral sex to cancer, and so on. Today, we have traditional attitudes that exist alongside more
liberal views that developed strongly from the 60s (the film making sector the outstanding example). Even if
today we have this liberalization, heterosexuality is always promoted as the basis for child rearing and family
life, a specific type of body shape is always the most appreciated, a xertain kind of sexual activity is
promoted, and so on.

CHAPTER 8 – race and ethnicity

RACE
Football is an example our field in which racism is blatant even today; from the 60s we have a rise in black
people playing in western European football clubs and only in the 90s we have a concerted attempt to make
48
football authorities tackle racism. One of the major changes is that football racism shifted also in online
environments, particularly social media.

The roots of racism lay in the 18th and 19th centuries, when biologists and zoologists worked systematically
to classify varieties of Organism and species, included human beings. We have the famous classifications of
Linnaeus, rooted in the geographical origin but in which skin color was considered a key distinguishing
aspect; the one of De Gobineau, the father of modern racism, grounded on this a priority of the white race
in the most influential living today; similarly we find the one of Kant, that introduces the notion of a mixed
race person, diminishing its purity. Biologists and sociologists today see race as a discredited scientific
concept and there is evidence of an absence of clear-cut races, just a range of physical variations in the
human species arising from population inbreeding and contact between different groups; the genetic
diversity within populations that share visible physical traits is just as great as the diversity between those
populations.
If we refer to ancient civilizations, before the modern period, the basis of the classification of human beings
was unconnected to the modern ideas of race and with tribal and kinship affiliations, cultural similarity,
group membership; only as Europeans started to entering contact with other overseas populations, typically
colonies, we officially can identify the beginning of racism. Race has always been important and used by
powerful social groups as part of their strategies of domination and reproduction of patterns of inequality.
Even today we can't really say that racism completely disappeared: an outstanding example is the fact that
the concept of race is embedded within the standard forms used in healthcare, job applications, the census
and many more; once the classificatory procedure like this has been embedded in social institutions, an
equal forces to be mobilized if it is to be changed.

The process through which understandings of race are used to classify individuals or groups of people is
called racialization: historically, groups of people became labeled as distinct on the basis of natural physical
features but also social phenomena like colonialism and slavery, that institutionalized racism and leave
reminiscences even today. Racialization has occurred also within Europe and even today, when aspects of
individuals daily lives, such as employment, personal relations, housing, health care, education and legal
representation are shaped and constrained by the position within that system of stratification. Race is a term
even today of widespread use, as people still naively believe in the possibility of mankind to be separated
into biologically distinct races.

ETHNICITY
While the idea of race implies something fixed and biological, ethnicity is a source of identity whose basis
lies in society and culture; it refers to a type of social identity related to ancestry, both perceived or real, and
cultural differences which become active in certain contexts. It has a longer history than race and it's closely
related to the concepts of nation and race, as all three refer to the idea of a class or category of people. Like
nations, ethnicity is an “imagined community”, whose existence depends on the self-identification of its
members, who may see themselves as culturally distinct from other groups in terms of language, shared
history or ancestry, religion and styles of dress or adornment. Ethnic groups always coexist with other ethnic
groups, and the differences are learned socially; some groups are regarded as born to rule or naturally lazy,
unintelligent and so on. People often use the term ethnicity when refer to ascriptive characteristics such as
skin color, blood ties or place of birth; yet, there is nothing innate about ethnicity, it is a social phenomenon
that is produced and reproduced overtime and for many people it is also central to their own individual and
group identity (while for others it may be insignificant or important only during times of social unrest). For
sure, ethnicity can provide an important thread of continuity with the past and is often kept alive through
the practice of cultural traditions; moreover, it is often used also because it carries no biological references.
Conversely to what happens in some Anglo-Saxon areas in which ethnic is regarded as something non-British,
everybody actually has an ethnicity, not innate but always related to the social context.

49
The notion of minority ethnic groups is widely used in sociology and it's much more than a merely numerical
distinction (statistic minorities are different from sociological); members of a minority ethnic group are
disadvantaged when compared with the dominant group, possessing more wealth, power and prestige and
having some sense of group solidarity, of belonging together à The experience of being subject of prejudice
and discrimination tends to heighten full length of common loyalty and interests. Hence, minority is used in
a non literal way to refer to the subordinate position of our group within society rather than its numerical
representation; the example of South Africa during the apartheid may be useful to understand the fact that
the white minority of 15% of the population was able to exploit the resources of the other 85%.

We must clearly distinguish between different terms we used in sociology when dealing with the societies:
- prejudice = it refers to your opinions or attitudes held by members of one group towards another; A
prejudice person preconceived views are often based on hearsay rather than on direct evidence and
are resistant to change even in the face of new information. People may harbor favorable prejudices
about groups and with which they identify and negative prejudices against others, and not deal
impartially with members of that group.

Prejudices are frequently grounded in stereotypes, fixed and inflexible characterizations of a social
group, often applied to minority ethnic groups (e.g. all black men are naturally athletic, all east Asians
are hardworking). Some stereotypes contain something of truth, while others simply are definable
as mechanisms of displacement, in which feelings of hostility or anger are directed against objects
that are not the real origin of those feelings.

Scapegoating is common when ethnic groups come into competition with one another for economic
resources; it is normally directed against groups that are distinctive and relatively powerless that
become an easy target

- if prejudice describes attitude and opinions, discrimination refers to an actual behavior towards
another group or individual; it can be seen in activities that disqualify members of one group from
opportunities open to others.

Although prejudice is often the basis of discrimination, the two may exist separately: a white house-
buyer might steer away from purchasing properties in predominantly black neighborhoods not
because of attitudes of hostility but because of worries about declining property values.

One form of prejudice is racism, based on socially significant physically distinctions that then have a
biological, racialized, basis in the inferiority of some individuals and groups. Racism is not just the thought of
an individual or the latter that joins an organization that promotes a racist agenda, there is much more: the
concept of institutional racism was developed in the US in the late 60s; this suggests that racism pervades
all of society's structures in a systematic manner, with institutions such as the police, the health service and
the education that promote policies that favor certain groups while discriminating others. It is defined also
as the collective failure of an organization to provide an appropriate and professional service to people
because of their color, culture or ethnic origin; it can be seen or detected in processes, attitudes and behavior
which amount to discrimination through unwitting prejudice, ignorance, thoughtlessness and racist
stereotyping which disadvantaged minority ethnic people.

In 2022 officially legitimate systems of racism are hard to find, but racist attitudes have not disappeared, as
today we can talk of a more subtle, sophisticated new racism that uses the idea of cultural differences to
exclude certain groups. Hierarchies of superiority and inferiority are constructed according to the values of
the majority culture, and those groups that stand apart from the majority can become marginalized for their
refusal to assimilate in the majority culture (clearly that is a political dimension, such is the case in France
over the girl we wish to wear Islamic headscarves to school). Anti-Semitism and Islamophobia are other cases
50
where discrimination is experienced differently across segments of the same population, as we can talk
about “multiple racism” and “group closure”. Why is racism persistent in the 21st century?
- Because of the exploitive relations that Europeans established with non-white people during the era
of colonialism, when white race was superior and the black one was considered sub-human
- because of the response of some social groups within countries that encouraged inward migration in
the post 1945 period; When the economic boom stopped around the 70s, immigrants became
responsible for work shortages

Work, housing and criminal justice are three areas which have been investigated by sociologists monitor
the real effects of social and economic disadvantage resulting from the major social inequalities of gender,
class and ethnicity; it is a pattern of inequalities according to the intersectionality perspective that sociology
is trying to adopt.

CHAPTER 21 – nation, war and terrorism

Orban and his Fidesz party are an example of modern nationalism, that reached a stunning 67% at the
election and a landslide victory, with the slogans of the defense of Hungary; the politician, from the far-right,
uses social and economic nationalistic policies to defend Hungary from colonizers such as multinational
companies, IMF, EU, foreign investors and so on. He adopts an anti-immigration policy, anti-refugee (175 km
of fencing at the border) and anti-Muslim attitude, claiming back the “greater Hungary” destroyed by 2/3
after WWI and the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian empire. The rhetoric is always the one of the
civilizational conflict, the stress of the Christian background, the opposition to multiculturalism, Islam,
LGBTQ+, … the link between the nationalism and the populism here is evident, with the fight against all the
possible challenges against the supremacy of the nation-state as the primary actor in the international
scenario; it is important to remember that however solid, natural and permanent the world’s nation states
may appear, they are fluid aspects of a human’s existence, regularly created and destroyed.

Nationalist movements, especially those of the global South against the European colonial oppression, have
been highly significant political actors. Regards the founding fathers:
• DURKHEIM: He believed that the increasing economic integration produced by modern industry
would cause the rapid decline of nationalism
• MARX: he considered that nationalism would fade away under communism
• WEBER: he was prepared to declare himself in economic nationalist, he talked a lot about
nationalism.

Even today, in the 21st century, nationalism is flourishing despite the increasing interdependence brought
by the globalization processes.

• GELLNER: he is one of the leading theorists of nationalism and argued that it, together with the nation
and the nation-state have their origins in the French and industrial revolutions of the late 18th
century, they are the products of modernity and do not have deep roots in human nature. There are
several features of modern societies that have led to the emergence of national phenomena:
a) A modern industrial society is associated with rapid economic development and a
complex division of Labor; modern industrialism created the need for a much more
effective system of state and government than existed before
b) In the modern state, individuals must interact all the time with strangers, since the
basis of society is no longer the local village or town but very much larger units; mass
education come up based on official language taught schools, as the main means
whereby a large-scale society can be organized in kept unified

Gellner’s Theory is clearly functionalist, as argues that education functions to produce social unity,
but tends to underestimate the role of education in producing conflicts and divisions; it does not
51
 really explain the strength and persistence of nationalism, which is related not just to education but
also to its capacity to generate strong sources of identity for people à Perceived threats to national
interests can also be understood as threats to the integrity of people self-identity. The need of
identity certainly does not originate with the emergence of modern, industrial societies, and we can
say that nationalism draws on sentimental forms of symbolism that go back much further into the
past.

• SMITH: he states that nations tend to have perceived direct lines of continuity with the earlier ethnic
communities, that he calls ethnies; an ethnie it is a group that shares ideas of common ancestry, a
common cultural identity and a link with a specific homeland. In previous periods of history there
have been ethnic communities that resemble nations, such as the Jews with the tensions of the 20th
century against the Palestinians. Nations followed divergent patterns of development in relation to
ethnies: in some nations a single ethnie expanded so as to push out earlier rivals, such as it happened
in France and in other western European countries, when all the other languages spoken were
removed the thanks to the school and punishments; yet, remnants have persisted such as the Basque
region, between France and Spain, endowed with its own culture, history, language, and desire of
being a nation-state (not all nationalist feelings have had the same level of violence).

We should not see nationalism and national populism as something anomalous today, as they are grounded
ideologies that stand at the basis of the modern social order and have been part of the political projects of
liberals, socialists, feminists and many more; It has a very broad appeal across different social groups and is
embedded within organizations and social institutions. It persists also because of vital aspect of nationalism
is the way it lives in and through routine social interactions at the micro level of social life in routine
community and family talk, pub discussions about national sporting events, involvement in rituals
celebrating the nation such as commemorations of wartime sacrifice, and in everyday consumptions of
national symbols and objects in the media, museum displays and much more. Previous forecasts that
nationalism would gradually gave way to globalization have to be reconsidered, because nationalism is a
very flexible ideology.

• ELIAS: he analyzed had some nations come to see themselves some civilized compared to other
uncivilized ones; He analyzed how self-styled civilized nations conduct worse involving extreme
violence and mass killing yet maintaining their civilized self-image. The work of Elias is dated 1939,
but it was obviously published later in 1969. He started with the observation that the concept of
civilization expresses the self-consciousness of the West, the national consciousness, that seeks to
describe what constitutes its special character and what its proud of column the level of its
technology, the nature of its manners, the development of its scientific knowledge or view of the
world and much more. People in the modern West believe their societies set the standards for
civilized conduct and are, therefore, superior toward their type of society; standards of behavior also
involve table manners, bodily functions, sexual expression, violence. He demonstrates that the
direction of change since the medieval period was towards increasing thresholds of repugnance and
shame, with many behaviors previously considered normal gradually coming to be seen as
unacceptable: people developed the stronger internalized self-restraints and exhibited a much more
stable control over their emotions. Elias explains these changes in this state formation ending the
interdependent relations of the early modern periods; courtiers wanting prestige and influence in
the European Royal Courts and impose themselves new codes of conduct for their violent outbursts
and emotions, becoming the first modern people. These manners said the standards for rising
bourgeois classes and eventually spread to other social groups too; this type of self-control became
a “second nature” and it can appear to others as rather detached and calculating. competition for
power among rival regions, towns and social groups, that often lead to violent conflicts, disappeared
with the beginning of absolutist monarchies of the 17th and 18th century in Europe, with the result
of fewer but larger social units developed via the logic of the monopoly mechanism; it involves a state
52
 in which all the opportunities are controlled by a single authority, the means of physical force and
taxations are monopolized and the typically modern personality type emerges: only where the state
monopolized the physical force there is stability and security for individuals, that can develop a new,
higher level of self control that then becomes a second nature.
The work was deeply criticized:
a) Some have suggested that Elias overplays the differences between the modern individuals
and people in other societies; the notion of the civilizing process is a myth and human beings
today are essentially similar to human beings of the past, so we can say that there have been
no uncivilized or primitive people (e.g. nakedness has always been cause of shame and it's
not the product of civilization)
b) Elias sees the social processes that essentially the unplanned outcome of many intentional
actions, but this is assumption needs to be tested against the evidence in particular cases and
seems to ignore the liberal civilizing offensives such as those carried out by powerful social
elites.
c) Elias’ focus on civilizing processes may be criticized for neglecting or under theorizing the
dark side of such processes; Western civilization was not a painless process, and, as Foucault
has shown, it can feel far from civilized for many social groups (e.g. the normal operation of
western civilization can produce genocides). Civilization and barbarism, hence, are not
opposites: civilized conduct amounting insider groups may be closely linked to barbaric acts
against outsiders

Elias’ ideas have been highly influential not only in historical sociology, but also in sociology of the
body, the study of human emotions; what was stunning was the fact that macro and micro levels
could be linked through a central focus on dynamic social processes. This is particularly useful for
current concerns about levels of violence in society, terrorism and genocide, this study of civilizing
and decivilizing processes that produce so much suffering in human societies.

The existence of well-defined ethnies also leads to the phenomenon of nations without states: in this case,
many of the essential characteristics of the nation are present, but those who comprise the nation lack and
independent political community; separatist movements, such as those of the Basque country and in Israel
and Palestine, as well as many others, are driven by the desire to set up an autonomous self-governing state.
several different types of nations without states can be comprised, depending on the relationship between
the ethnie and the larger nation-state in which it exists:

1) a nation state may accept the cultural differences found among its minority or minorities and allow
them a certain amount of active development. It is the case of UK, in which Scotland and Wales are
recognized as possessing histories and cultural features that are partly divergent from the rest of the
islands and so they have some of their own institutions; Scotland has a different religious tradition
and a separate educational and legal system, where the autonomy that is enlarged from 1999 with
the creation of the parliament. Similarly, the Basque country and the Catalonia are recognized as
autonomous communities come on with their own parliament, with their own rights and powers but
much power still remains in the hands of the national governments and parliaments

2) a second type consists in those nations that have a high degree of autonomy. It is the case of Quebec
and the Flanders, that have regional political bodies without actually being fully independent, but
still holding the power to take major decisions

3) A third type are those nations which more or less completely lack recognition from the majority
population or the state that contains them; the larger nation state uses force in order to deny
recognition to the minority. The case of Palestinians, Tibetans (Dalai Lama in exile trying to find
autonomy in a non-violent way) in China and Kurds (parliament in exile in Brussels) are examples.
53
In the case of national minorities in Europe, the EU has a significant part to play: it was formed through
allegiances created by the major nations of the Western Europe, but a key element of its philosophy is the
devolution of power to localities and regions; So, Basques, Scots and Catalans have the right to relate directly
to EU organizations, that might give them sufficient autonomy to be satisfied.

In the case of the global S, most countries were colonized by Europeans and achieved independence and
some points in the second half of the 20th century; Boundaries between colonial administrations were
agreed arbitrarily in Europe and did not take into account existing economic, cultural or ethnic divisions
among the population. each colony with a collection of people and old states that were brought together
within the same boundaries, and when former colonies achieved independence that you often found difficult
to create a sense of nationhood and national belonging; this is something that happens even today, with
internal rivalries and competing claims to political authority (even because during the colonialism, some
ethnic group had prospered more than others, creating different interests and goals).

• PILKINGTON: he dealt with the effect of globalization on nationalism and national identity; he argues
that nationalism was quite recent and in general humans have always lived, until very recently, in
small settlements, with the idea of being members by a larger nation that was alien. only from the
18th century onwards we have the development of mass communication and media and
consequently the of a widespread national community, that can be said to be constructed. a crucial
element in developing a sense of nationhood was the existence of some “other”, against which the
national identity was formed; this was typically spread downwards from the elite to the rest of the
society as levels of literacy spread towards the whole population and has communication enabled
the spread of ideas. If the national identity is socially constructed, then it is possible that it will change
and develop, especially after the influence of globalization. The phenomenon produces conflicting
pressures between centralization and decentralization and, as a result, brings a dual threat to
national identity:
A) centralization creates pressures from above, particularly with the growing
power of the EU
B) decentralization creates pressures from below, with the strengthening of
ethnic identities

Also among the members of ethnic minority groups there is a strengthening of local identities and
the assertion of their differences from other ethnic groups; nevertheless, it is also possible to see a
positive response to globalization, a healthy one, that is the acceptance of multiple identities: a
person can feel English, British and European at the same time. This is not something easy for some
parts of Africa, for example, where nations and nation states are not yet fully formed.
In other parts of the world some already argue that we are seeing the end of nation state in the face
of globalization, the beginning of a borderless world, but it is also true the opposite (e.g. populism,
nationalism, “MAGA”).

The nation-state is also the political body capable of granting and protecting the rights of its own citizens
and promoting the rights of the individual more generally. The demand for recognition of basic rights first
emerged in the 12th and 13th centuries in the context of intra-Christian conflicts and discrimination against
Jewish people in Poland, even if it was with the French and American revolutions that we have the
establishment of formal documents setting out human rights in 1776 and 1789. A global concept of human
rights took root in the wake of WWII, in 1948, with the UN Universal Declaration of human rights; 30 articles
covered the fundamental principles of the human being such as life, liberty, privacy and security, slavery,
torture, cruelty, arrest in detention, marriage and property. Nevertheless, the idea of human rights means
little unless those rights are enforceable.

54
The contrast between national citizenship and universal rights shows the matter of enforceability: nation-
states can grant citizenship to all of those people living within certain territories, providing with certain rights
that can be enforced with the full monopoly of the state (police, armed forces, legal system, government at
all levels); citizenship also involves contributions by citizens, such as the payment of taxing and obeying state
laws, which entitle them to protection and state benefits. No similar global body or set of institutions is
capable of enforcing human rights around the world, and human rights are not linked to any corresponding
duties or obligations on the part of individuals. There is a clear distinction between social rights of the citizen
and human rights of the person, and citizenship is clearly a more effective basis for upholding people's rights.
Universal rights, grounded on being human, are not a good starting point, they are socially constructed,
locally developed and achieved by communities and not imposed from above; it's unrealistic to imagine are
human rights immediately applicable across cultures (thinking about the theme of life, abortion, steam cells,
genetic manipulation). Yet, the concept of universal human rights applicable to all persons across the world
continues to motivate a range of people, organizations and social groups to protect and defend those facing
discrimination and persecution, whatever they may be à an active utopia

CHAPTER 13 – cities and urban life

CITIES
Songdo in South Korea is a “new” city, designed to be smart, sustainable and high-tech, while reducing the
common chronic problems of traditional cities like pollution, overcrowding and congestions using robotics,
AI and digital technologies; it is a completely different experience of the city. Another important trend is the
development and planning of around 120 new cities throughout the world, facilitated by the new liberalism
and deregulation guaranteed by the globalized circulation of capitals; given that the global population
continues to rise and that most of it we will live in urban regions, it seems logical to build more cities rather
than trying to develop and change existing ones. Many of these projects are founded both through public
and private funds, but two often are directed only to the wealthy middle class and business owners;
moreover, those that live in these new environments usually find them cold and difficult in socialization.

Davis, already in 1965, anticipated that we were moving towards the “urbanization of the human
population”: today, 50% of the global people live in a urban environment, and the percentage is expected
to grow even more in the future. Large cities like NY and London are conceptualized as global cities,
characterized by an unprecedented level of connectivity and integration in the global economy, yet, many
people define them as cold, alienating, unfriendly places; this happens because of a distinctive feature of
the modern world: the interaction with strangers and the following impersonal encounters that is for sure
regarded as an element of modernity.

Cities have a long history and have experienced forms that are radically different; the words first cities
developed around 3500 BC in the regions around the river Nile in Egypt, the Tigris and Euphrates in Iraq, the
Indus in Pakistan and had roughly 10.000-100.000 people, very different from today’s cities, that go well
beyond 20M (up to Tokyo, with 38M). GB was the very first nation to undergo the phenomenon of the
industrialization and the consequent urbanization – the movement of the population from rural areas to the
cities; in the Anglo-Saxon case, in a century, from 1800 to 1900, they moved from 20% to 74% of people
living in a city, led by the metropolis of London. The urbanization in other European and North American
cities started a little bit later but in some cases had a faster pace; those areas are nowadays already
urbanized, with lots of people in the cities, and have slow rates of growth in general, while in the global
south urbanization and the growth of the population have huge paces.

A conurbation is a cluster of cities and towns forming a continuous network, but they can extend even more
in the megalopolis (term from the ancient Greece) such as the north-eastern side of the US from Boston to
Washington. There is not a shared definition of what constitutes a city, but some features are shared by
most urban sociologists:
- larger populations
55
 - dense settlements
- occupational specialization
- permanent markets
- Predominance of an personal, rational orientation among residents

There is a specific mix of demographic, economic, social and psychological features; some sociologists today
prefer the concept of an urban or metropolitan region to those of city and suburb (That may have different
extents).

Only at the turn of the 20th century so the stations and social commentators began to distinguish the town
from the city: cities had large populations, were cosmopolitan, expanded because of migration (typically
international, like the one of the Italians towards New York), especially because peasants and villagers
migrated because of the lack of opportunities of the countryside and the apparent advantages and
attractions of the cities; as the city grew, many were horrified to see the inequalities and poverty that
intensified, stimulating a sociological analysis. In 1899, the African American sociologist and black civil rights
campaigner W.E.B. Du Bois combined ethnography, social history and descriptive statistics in a study of the
urban lives of black communities in Philadelphia, mapping a relatively poor district with chronic social
problems such as crime, drug abuse and poverty. The findings of its project differed substantially from the
widely accepted notion that the area had problems caused by black people that were ignorant, lazy and
lacking intelligence; that work, instead, showed a wide range of social problems, including a lack of
education, blocked access to better paid-occupation and restricted opportunities for women, while the
widespread racial prejudice played a part also in the housing market. His work was largely ignored until the
60s, with the emergence of postcolonial movements and the decolonization of the discipline.

The growth of the cities in the 19th century source associated with gender separation, as public life and
private spaces were dominated by men, who were free to travel through the city; women were not expected
to be seen in most public spaces and those that were seen were considered “street walkers” (=prostitutes).
Even if today we do not see such extremes and the development of the city offered women new
opportunities, there is still an everyday sexism. As suburbanization took place, gender separation became
even more obvious, while the male were the breadwinners and commuted to the city on a daily basis, women
were expected to remain at home and take care of the family; means of transportation for commuters were
designed by men as well. Simmel points out that the city is a sociological entity that is formed spatially and
is still gendered, still demonstrates the relationship between power and space in terms of what gets built,
where it is built, how it is built and for whom.

Modern cities not only have an impact on behaviors, but also on patterns of thought and feelings, with views
about it that got polarized:
- City as the civilized virtue
- City as the smoking inferno

Globalization is often thought in terms of the duality between the national level and the global, yet it is the
largest cities of the world that comprise the main circuits through which globalization occurs; the function
of our global economy is dependent on a set of central local locations we developed informational
infrastructures and concentration of facilities. The concept of global city describes urban environments that
are home to headquarters of large, transnational corporations and a superabundance of financial,
technological and consulting services; we can identify four traits:
1) cities developed into command posts, center of direction and policy making for the global economy
2) they are key locations for financial and specialized service firms, became more important than the
manufacturing industries
3) they are the sites of production and innovation in the expanding corporate service industries and
finance
56
 4) they are markets in which the products of the financial and service industries are bought, sold or
otherwise disposed of

The products, the things made by global cities are computing, data processing and digital services, usually
carried out in downtown areas that create clusters in which producers can work in close interaction with one
another.

THEORIZING URBANISM
Cities are relatively large forms of human settlement within which a wide range of activities are performed,
enabling them to become centers of power in relation to outlying areas and smaller settlements; if
urbanization refers to the process which brings large cities into being, then urbanism refers to their lifestyles
and personality types and characterize modern cities. The contrast between urban and rural areas is not
clear-cut nor fixed, as human settlement processes are dynamic and characterized by constant movements
of people; the city is spatially open and today it is anachronistic to refer to it as a thing-like entity.

Tonnies was interested in the effects of urbanization on social bonds and community solidarity, which he
differentiated in:
- Gemeinschaft
- Gesellsschaft

As regards the effects of urbanization on individuals, on their attitudes and behaviors, Tonnies influenced
Simmel and his account of “The metropolis and the mental life”; he stated that the city bombarded the mind
with images and impressions, in a sharp contrast with the slow and smooth (= predictable) life of the
countryside, in a way that is impossible for the brain to process them all. As a consequence, humans start to
protect themselves with a sense of blasé and disinterest, a “seen-it-all-before” attitude, that allows them to
focus on whatever they need to do in a highly selective way, distancing emotionally and physically from the
others. In the myriad of fleeting contacts with others in a urban environment, the latter can be perceived as
emotionless and rather cold, leading between impersonality and even isolation, but Simmel points out that
people are not like that by nature but are forced to accept and adopt such behavior. The pace of urban life
partially explains the typical urban personality, but he also stressed the importance of city as the center of
money and economy, that demand punctuality, rational exchange and an instrumental approach to business;
this encourages dealing with people with little room for emotional connection and a lot of cost-benefit
calculations. Among the objections, his work is said to be based on personal observation, be speculative, be
set out in a negative tone and with a bias against the capitalistic city, and even overgeneralizing from a
specific type of city to all cities (but not all cities are financial centers). For sure, though, it provides us a
psychological explanation for some key characteristics of contemporary urbanism in which the city is not a
spatial entity with social consequences, but a sociological entity that is formed spatially.

Some sociologists of the Chicago School from the 20s to the 40s developed ideas that were for many years
the basis for the research in urban sociology; in particular, they are:
- The ecological approach
Ecology is a physical science which studies the adaptation of plant and animal organisms to their
environment, and it is this sense of ecology that is used in the context of environmental issues and
problems; in the natural world, organisms tend to be distributed in systematic ways so that a balance
or equilibrium between different species is achieved, and in the exact same way major urban
settlements are sited, together with the distribution of different types of neighborhood and social
groups, in a way that could be understood in terms of similar principles. Cities do not grow up at
random but developed in response of advantages features of the environment (even if it's some
smart cities not necessarily continue this trend), and they're also internally divided because
individuals are best suited to live in a particular region at a particular milieu: through the process of
competition, invasion and succession (all taken from biology), cities become ordered into different
57
 zones or areas through the struggle of the inhabitants; a city can be pictured as a map of areas with
distinct and contrasting social characteristics. In the initial stages of growth, industries congregate at
sites suitable for the raw materials they need and population clusters around these; amenities follow
and land values in property taxes rise, making it difficult for families to carry on living in the central
neighborhood, except in cramped conditions or decaying housing where rents are still low; the center
becomes dominated by business and entertainment, with the more affluent residents moving out to
the newly forming suburbs; the center rings are both big business and decaying private houses, while
beyond that there are the longer established neighborhoods, the housing for workers and further
out the suburbs in which higher income groups tend to live. Processes of invasion and succession
occur within this segment of the concentric rings. The urban ecology stresses the interdependence
of different city areas and the differentiation, the specialization of groups and occupational roles, as
the main way in which human beings adapt to their environment. Groups on which many others
depend on will take dominant roles that are often reflected in their central geographical position
(banks, insurance companies), but these zones also arise from relationships both of time and space
(e.g. rush hour).
Among the criticisms there is the unfounded link between human and animal societies, the under
emphasizing of the importance of the conscious design of men, the attention on the American
experience that cannot be generalized. On the overall, urbanism promotes the diverse subcultures
rather than submerging everyone within an anonymous mass: it may be on the outside a world of
strangers, but it also helps to create new personal relations that are forms of community life, less
bounded to specific places and constituted by more diverse and voluntary relations.

- Urbanism as a way of life

This approach regards how cities relate to and interact with the rest of societies, how urbanism exerts
influence outside city boundaries, and is carried out by Wirth; for him, urbanism was a way of life,
something that could not be reduced to or understood simply by measuring the size of European
populations, but had to be grasped as a form of social experience. In cities, large numbers of people
live in close proximity without knowing one another personally, having partial and fleeting contacts
predominantly made for obtaining certain objectives and satisfaction; the latter are secondary
contact, opposed to the primary ones that are represented by the family and community
relationships. People who live in urban areas tend to be mobile, enjoy travel and leisure moving
around, and consequently bonds between people are relatively weak in an overall situation in which
the pace of life is faster than in rural areas, competition prevails over cooperation; community life
who is on the decline, but this does not mean that your urbanism has no positive effects: it brought
freedom, toleration, progress everywhere, not just in the city boundaries, as testified by the process
of suburbanization. Limitation of this perspective are the American experience, the differences of the
global South, the exaggeration in the impersonality of modern cities, the absolute dismissal of urban
villagers and the refusal of any role in building community rather than only dismissing them.

Urban development is not something autonomous or generated from within, but it has to be analyzed in
relation to major patterns of political and economic change and the restructuring of the space, as well
analyzed by supporters of Marx: urbanism is one aspect of the creative environment brought by the spread
of industrial capitalism, that blurs the distinction between city and countryside and continuously
restructures the space (e.g. a firm that chooses to move its factories, to build a new HQ, a developmental
center, moving according to the most favorable taxation, …).
The development is also uneven on a spatial dimension as regards to global inequalities between the
northern rich hemisphere and the relatively poor global South: the turn towards neoliberal political ideas
led to the myth of the fact that some economies just had to catch up with the West, while the result is not a
catching up but a restoration of power of the class elites. This spatial form of society is linked to the overall
mechanisms of its development: architectural features of neighborhoods expressed struggles and conflicts
between different groups in society and also broader symbolic manifestation of social forces (e.g. a
58
skyscraper made for profits but also to symbolize the power); after is not just a distinct location - the urban
area - but also an integral part of the process of collective consumption, which in turn form an inherent
aspect of industrial capitalism; schools, transport services and leisure amnesties are always in which people
collectively consume services provided by the state or by private companies.

Cities, before modern times, where self-contained entities that stood apart from the predominantly rural
areas in which they were located, and travel was something specialized for merchants and soldiers;
globalization has had a profound effect, making cities more interdependent and encouraging the
proliferation of horizontal links across national borders. Some predict that thanks to globalization, tech and
robotics we are going to have the death of cities as we know them because many older functions can now
be carried out in cyberspace rather than in urban areas, we have e-commerce, we have electronic markets,
we can work remotely, but at the same time they are becoming crucial centers of coordination for the flows
of information, the management of business activities and innovation.

The majority of people on the planet now live in urban areas, but as we've seen with the global South this
does not mean the end of urban poverty and inequality, rather a new role for local and city authorities
that have to collaborate with business, investors, government bodies, civic associations, professional groups,
trade unions and other shaping forces, especially in 3 realms:
1) Cities can contribute to economic productivity and competitiveness by managing the local
habitat, the conditions and facilities that form the social base for economic productivity;
Competitiveness depends on the qualified workforce which is, on its own, based on a strong
educational system, good public transport, affordable housing, emergency services, cultural
resources
2) cities play a pivotal role in ensuring socio cultural integration within diverse multiethnic
populations; This avoids fragmentation and promote social cohesion
3) cities are important venues for political representation and management; local authorities
have two advantages over the nation state:
§ they enjoy greater legitimacy with those they represent
§ they have more flexibility and room for maneuver

in general, people feel national politics no longer represent their interests and concerns

CHAPTER 17 – work and employment

INTRODUCTION
In our societies those occupations that socially significant, that imply very important roles and
responsibilities, are often poorly paid, while it happens the contrary for occupations that are not-so-
essential, as we could testify thanks to the divisions of essential/non-essential during the lockdowns for
Covid; social significance and financial reward are not always that matched. Key workers were mostly women
and were also the one paid the least, stressing even more the disparity between the role and the worker’s
pay and status. The world of work is very diverse and complex, with lots of factors that, combined, determine
the occupational group and the reward of that person: Qualifications, skill levels, ability of the group to
control its membership, level of unionization, shortage of qualified people, profitability of this sector,
discrimination by class, race, ethnicity, gender.

HOUSEWORK
Housework is traditionally carried out by women and it's normally unpaid, while being very hard and
exhausting; one of the main questions of interest to sociologists is how the growing involvement of women
in the labor market has affected the domestic division of labor, whether, since the quantity of domestic work
has not diminished and female are more involved in full time jobs, domestic affairs are arranged differently.
Oakley conducted a study on the housewife role that gave light to something that before the 70s was
59
unexplored in sociology: the “private matter” of the division of labor in the household. She stated that
housework, in its current form in the West, came into existence with the separation of the home from the
workplace happened with the industrialization; domestic work became largely invisible and the house
became the natural domain of women. Before the inventions and facilities provided by industrialization,
work in the household was very hard and exhausting; tet, today the average amount of time spent on
domestic work by women has not declined markedly thanks to those instruments (there is more time spent
on childcare and meal preparation for example). Housework accounts for between 25 and 40% of the wealth
created in the industrialized countries, but it can be for women very isolating, alienating and lacking
satisfaction; as a matter of fact, there is a self-imposed psychological pressure to meet standards self-
established but that feel like coming from the outside (since there is no economic reward for the work,
satisfaction is gained by meeting such standards). Men, on the contrary, tend to divide work and leisure
quite sharply, having the power provided by their income on the wives that are dependent on them for
economic survival. Some argue that this research is quite patriarchal and not focused on the gendered
division of the household labor, neglecting the divisions between different social classes; Moreover, it is
evident that the amount of housework carried out by men has been increasing: if we consider the total
amount of work, paid and domestic, carried out by men and women, the real movement towards more
equality seems to be taking place. Nevertheless, it is evident that western societies have a deeply embedded
attitude about women's proper place within the domestic sphere and sometimes their process of
equalization seems to be stalling because of the global economic pressure in competition that require more
commitment on mostly male workers; it has been demonstrated and intransigence of heterosexual men as
gender norms and practices and employment patterns change

THE SOCIAL ORGANIZATION OF WORK

à Durkheim found that industrialized societies were characterized by a complex division of labor and
specialized occupations; in the past, non-agricultural work entailed the mastery of a craft and his skills were
learned through apprenticeship, while with industrialization we have the emergence of specialized skills for
larger production processes. In other words, the mass production of goods substituted the artisanry based
on the home work; Durkheim also stressed the interdependence of these multiple occupations (organic
solidarity): if on one side he acknowledged the potentially harmful effects, on the other he found that the
specialization of roles strengthened and social solidarity through multidirectional relationships of production
and consumption in a really functionalist sense.

à Marx argued that modern industry would reduce human labor to a series of dull, and interesting work
tasks that alienated human beings come on that lost control over the production process and became hostile
to work, just carried out to survive.

TRANSFORMING THE WORLD OF WORK

Since the 70s we have witnessed the change in manufacturing industries from uniform mass production
towards a more flexible system, differentiated in niche markets.

Adam Smith is one of the founders of modern economics and identified the advantages of the division of
labor in terms of productivity, with the example of the pins. More than a century later, these ideas became
formalized in the work of Taylor, an American management consultant that had an approach known as
scientific management of the industrial process; this involved a detailed study of the industrial process,
breaking it down into simple operations that could be precisely timed and organized, maximizing industrial
output and impacting your organization of production and workplace politics. The control of the
management sector eroded view autonomy of the workers, with a consequent de-skilling and degradation
of labor. Their principles were adopted by the industrialist Henry Ford when he opened, in 1908, his car
factory Michigan; one of the most important innovations was the moving assembly line, on which each
worker was assigned a specialized task while the car was moving along the line. He was among the very first
to realize that mass production requires mass consumption in mass markets; he established an 8 hour
60
working day with a raised wage, ensuring that working class lifestyle could have afforded owing a Ford car,
and thus consuming a mass produced product.

Fordism was characterized by mutual reliance and had not the possibility of moving factories and
headquarters around the globe to find the cheapest labor, the lightest regulations and taxes; this period
goes up to the early 70s, in which there was a relative stability in labor relations and a high degree of
unionization, with a long-term commitment to workers higher wages that were linked to productivity. By the
70s, the Fordist system failed: it was based on supplying goods to the domestic market, without taking into
account transnational corporations and international markets (competition); another matter was the
production of standardized good, with rigid assembly lines that did not allow to alter a product.

Depending on some characteristics we can identify:

- low-trust systems, in which tasks are set by management and geared by machines; those who carry
out work tasks are closely supervised and have very little autonomy under the surveillance system
and the scientific management. in general, there is high abstentionism and dissatisfaction
- high-trust systems, in which workers are permitted, within overall guidelines, to control the pace and
even the content of their work come on with high satisfaction.

High-trust systems are typically those of the post-Fordist era, in which flexibility and innovation are
maximized to meet new demands for diverse, customized products; these changes, some argue, are related
to those occurring in the wider society, such as in party politics, welfare programs, consumer demand,
lifestyle choices. Thanks to CAD and CAM, we can today talk of a mass customization of products: Internet
data are used to gain information about individual consumer demand, which is turned into products made
to their precise specifications; some argue that it is an illusion of choice, because in reality options available
to Internet customers are no greater than those offered by a typical mail-order catalogue. What is common,
though, is that firms used to build a product first and then to worry about how to sell it later, while today
mass customizers sell first and build second. The shift has huge consequences in terms of the need of
holding large stocks of parts and speed; another massive shift was the one on the place where products are
made: in the past, factory workers produced every single individual component of the final product that was
sold in owned manufacturers’ showrooms; today, giant retailers such as Amazon are in control, and no
longer manufacturers (that often do not own factories and are not responsible for working conditions,
especially for those occurring remotely in other continents with little worker rights).

The label post-Fordism is sometimes rejected by some scholars, arguing that Fordist practices have not been
completely abandoned; rather, it's like a neo-Fordism, a mixing of techniques. What is common, is the
globalization of the economic life and the reshaping of the experience of work: it was previously predictable
and stable, while today is more flexible, more uncertain and has wide consequences across society.

Post-Fordism is characterized by shifts in production and consumption processes, even if someone is arguing
that we are living in a phase of development beyond the industrial era altogether; we live in a postindustrial
society and in a knowledge economy, in which much of the workforce is involved not in the physical
production or distribution of material goods but in their design, development, technology, marketing, sale
and servicing.

Portfolio workers page 713

Job insecurity has become an important topic in this sociology of work of the 21st century, as it is considered
to be linked to the flexible employment practices of post-Fordism; the drive for efficiency and profit means
that those with few skills, or the wrong skills, find themselves in insecure, marginal jobs that are vulnerable
to changes in global markets. Workers lack the assurance that their jobs will be stable and they can rely on
continuing work every period of time, consequently questioning whether they can pay rent, get a mortgage,
61
take a holiday, buy consumer goods and so on; job insecurity is much more than the fear of redundancy, it
had comprehended the anxieties about the transformation of work and the effects of the transformation on
health and personal life. Flexible working, temporary and short-term contracts, on-call opportunities
increased job insecurity; we speak about gig economy as the sector based on freelancing and casual hours
of work (concept taken for the entertainment industry), that provide positive consequences on creativity,
freedom of accepting or rejecting works, but at the same time is precarious, unpredictable, based on
reputation, unstable.

FEMINIZATION OF WORK
a) Up to the 20th, paid work in the developed countries was mostly made by men, typically the sole
breadwinners of the family; moreover, in many cases the productive activity and the activities of the
household were not separated, which implied the participation of all family members in the production
of goods (and a considerable influence of women on all of what did not regard war or politics)
b) The industrial era brought a separation of the workplace from home, with the creation of the public and
of the private spheres; men were employed outside, while women were associated with the domestic
values
c) Women’s participation in the paid labor started with WWI, because of necessity and it demonstrated
that it was not a “natural” division, but something socially constructed, and women could carry out all of
the activities reserved to men. Even if men, when came back, often gained back their positions, it was
something that could not have been stopped
d) After WWII the gendered division of labor changed dramatically and rose up to modernity. We still have
a gender pay gap with women that tend to have part-time, low-paid jobs, even if differences are
narrowing because as women get pregnant later, are better educated, desire a career, are necessary and
not additional to the maintenance of the household’s position in the social ranks, for personal fulfillment
and because of calls for equality.

Today women make up around 40% of the workforce, even if there are significant national differences
throughout regions of the globe (moreover, they reflect the supremacy of the service sector in the global
north end of the agricultural sector in the global South); the nature of women's employment in many
countries is also different from that of men: women work for 3/4 in part time and low paid works throughout
the developed economies. that's an example of occupational gender segregation, in which women tend to
be segregated into categories of occupation that employ routinization and do not provide opportunities for
promotion; men and women are concentrated in different types of jobs, based on prevailing norms of what
is appropriate male and female work and according to historically transmitted cultural meanings that stress
the fact that the gender difference was historically constructed as hierarchical. Occupational segregation
has two dimensions:
1) vertical segregation refers to the tendency for women to be concentrated in jobs with little authority
and room for advancement, they are at the bottom, while men occupy more powerful and influential
positions, they are at the top
2) horizontal segregation refers to the tendency for men and women to occupy different categories of
job: women occupy domestic and routine clerical positions, while men are clustered in semi-skilled
and skilled manual positions. Women are also disproportionately employed in the public rather than
in the private sector, making them more vulnerable to the cuts in public sector employment that
follow economic recessions. The average pay of employed women is also below that of men,
constituted a gender wage gap that is really hard to reduce; much of this gap can be accounted for
interruptions to employment as women perform various caring roles, and it can also happen among
very similar roles with men. Even if today women are getting more prestigious occupations, this
comes together with an enormous increase in the number of women in low paid part-time jobs within
the rapidly expanding service sector.

62
63